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Sappho in 
Leucad I A 



BY 



ARTHUR STRINGER 



BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1907 



Copyrighty igoy 
By Arthur Stringer. 

Stage rights reserved 






U88ARY of COWGRESsf 

NOV 9 \m~ 

Oooyn^ht Entry 
/Vcxv B 'ffl? 
DUSS A ac„ Ho. 

COPY 3. 



COLONIAL PRESS 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds &* Co. 

Boston, U. S. A. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 



IIS 



CHARACTERS 



Sappho. 



Omaphale. 



Erinna. 
Atthis. 
Me gar a. 

Phaon. 



The poetess of Lesbos. A beautiful woman, 
still in her youth, passionate in word 
and mood and action. 

A young girl of Pharos, dark and slender, 
simple, rustic, almost uncouth in her 
shrinking timidity. 

Three young Lesbian women who study 
under Sappho. 



A Lesbian sailor; a swarthy, high-spirited, 
audacious, passionate man of the sea 
and lover of women, in the careless 
prime of his youthful strength. 

Pittacus. Tyrant of Mytilene; lean, calm, dispas- 
sionate, ambitious; of middle age. 

Alcaeus. The Lesbian poet; a thin, thoughtful, 
stoical man ; an embittered scholar of 
middle age, plotting against Sappho. 

Phocus. An idle and drunken poet of Samnos; 

fat and garrulous. 

Inarchus. An old Captain of the Guard of Pittacus; 
stolid, grisled, brawny. 

Hoplites, Sailors, a Soothsayer, Lesbian Men and Women. 
ii6 



Sappho in Leucadia 



ACT ONE 

Scene: The white-rocked cliff of Leucate, on the Island 
of Leucadia, overlooking the Ionian Sea. It is a 
quiet night in early Spring, and the cliff is bathed 
in the clear, blue-white fiioonlight of the Mediter- 
ranean. On the right stands the Leiicadian Temple 
to Apollo, showing a wall of pale marble touched 
here and there with gold. On the left is the curving 
line of the cliff -edge, with the sea beyond. Across 
the centre distance stretches a shadowy line of Leuca- 
dian sweet-apple grafted on quince-trees, in full 
bloom. Under this canopy of pale blossoms, silent 
and motionless, at first, sit Sappho and Phaon, 
watching the sea. Near by stands a bronze fire-basin, 
set in a block of ?narble, the embers within it still 
gently smouldering. The only sound, as the curtain 
goes up, is the soft and rhythmical wash of the waves 
on the sea-beach below, which continues in a gentle 
117 



Il8 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

und/irtone throughout the act. Once the curtain is 
up the quietness is broken by the entrance of two 
swarthy, slender -bo died boys, who walk slowly across 
the stage. One youth, trailing a shepherd^s crook on 
his arm, blows a plaintive-noted air on a seven- 
piped syrinx. He stops before the cliff-edge, drops 
his crook, and peers below. Then he flings a stone 
out into the sea, waiting for the sound of its fall. 
The second youth continues to play on his rough 
wooden flute. The music he makes is the blithely 
sorrowful music of a contented and primitive people. 
The boys pass on, still playing. Sappho stirs and 
sighs, and raises her arms to Phaon^s shoulders. On 
her head she wears a rope of violets woven into a 
chaplet. Her gown, however, is Grecian in its 
severity, almost plastic in its loose, full lines and 
statue-like lack of color. Phaon, in contrast to this, 
is robed in the softest of Tyrian purples above a 
mild Phoenician azure. Rings of beaten gold, a 
roughly jewelled knife-belt, and a polished bronze 
clasp mounted with alternating emeralds and sap- 
phires, tend to make his figure one of almost Oriental 
richness. 

Sappho 

Oh, Phaon, was the world not made for love 

On such a night? The moonbeams and the sound 

Of music and the whispering of the waves — 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 119 

They seem a woman's breast that throbs and burns 
And cries for love ! 

Phaon 

This is our last glad night 
On Leucate. 

Sappho 

Then lean to me again 
And say you love me as no woman, as 
No goddess clothed in glory, e'er was loved. 
Kindle and keep me burning like a flame 
Until I fall into your arms and lie 
As still as ashes. Kiss me on the mouth 
And say I am your first love and your last, 
The only love that all your life has known. 

Phaon 

Moon-white and honey-pale and delicate 
Your body seems, and yet within it burns 
A fire more fierce than ^Etna's. 

He stoops above her, hut she thrusts him hack with a 
sudden fear. 

Sappho 

Nay, I know 
These lips were not the first you crushed and kissed ! 



I20 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Phaon 
But you — have you ne'er sung of other Hps ? 

Sappho {with the deep voice of utter earnestness and 
conviction) 

I have known Love, but never love Hke this ! 

I have loved oft and lightly so at last 

I might love you ! These other men were not 

A god to me ! They were the trodden path, 

But not the Temple ! They were but the key 

And not the chamber ! They were but the oil 

And not the guarded lamp, the shallow tarn 

But not the mystic and impassioned Sea ! 

They were the mallet, not the marbled line, 

The unconsidered sail, but not the port; 

They were the flutters of a wing unfledged. 

The footsteps of a child who scarcely dreamed 

Of this predestined race with utter Joy! 

They only served to bring me near to you, 

And on their weakness raise and throne your strength I 

She clings to him again, passionately, -fiercely. 

Look, Phaon, in my eyes, and say once more 
You will not change, that you will never change ! 
You are a sea-god, not a man, I think, 
So bronzed and sinewed, so unruled and fierce 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 121 

And jealous of your strength, so made to crush 
And hold and battle for the thing you love ! 
Oh, is it true that Aphrodite leaned 
Across your oar, that night in Mysia, 
And gave you of her ointment whereby Youth 
And Strength and Courage should be ever yours? 
Are you more beautiful than other men, 
Or do I dream these god-like graces round 
About your wilful body? 

Phaon 

Beautiful 
You are, so beautiful must ever be 
Your dreams ; the thoughts in your own heart 
Are hallowed with its spirit, as the Sea 
Leaves brighter color on the stones it laves ! 

Sappho 

Yet men whose years are spent upon the Sea 
Inconstant live ! They know as many loves 
As lands ! O Phaon, love but me, but me ! 

Phaon 

One land alone, the gods have now decreed, 
And but one woman ! Lesbos is the land. 
And you, you, you, the woman, that I love ! 



122 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Sappho and Lesbos — they shall ever seem 
The only music made by lonely waves 
Sounding on lonely shores ! 

Sappho 

I am afraid, 
Sometimes I am still half afraid of joy 
So great as this. Why should I be content 
Without Erinna, Atthis, Megara, 
And all my singing children? . . . And you say 
Unhappy lovers come to this same cHff 
And leap into the Sea ? 

Phaon 

And if they live 
The fires of love are quenched, 'tis held; no more 
They sigh and wait, no more their bodies burn . . . 

Sappho {peering across the cliff, with 77iusing and mournful 
eyes) 

And if they die they wait and weep no more ! 

O Phaon, why should we be talking here 

Of tears and sorrow ! They seem out of tune 

W^ith languorous nights like this and love like ours! 

For I am happy, Phaon . . . All the world 

Seems over-run with rapture, as with wine. 

It makes me look and wonder, leaves me thrilled 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 123 

With wordless yearnings, with some vague content 
That seems too god-like in its unconcern, 
Too rare, too exquisite, for earthly hearts ! 

She turns from the Sea to the Temple and the higher 
slope of the cliff. 

Now Happiness and Leucate shall mean 
The same to me. Now all that life may bring 
Must seem a broken shadow of this month, 
This lotos-month of Love, this last soft night 
Of silence and of moonlight and of You ! 

She pauses and stirs and sighs, tremulously. 

What have you done to me ! I live in dreams 
Yet walk in light. I ache and burn with bliss. 
I could reach out my arms to all the world 
And take it to my breast and sing to it, — 
Yes, sing with music that would make it young 
And leave it glad, as in its Golden Age; 
Sing as the Sea has known no throat to sing, 
Sing, sing as Night has heard no lover sing ! 

Phaon 

But since you came from Lesbos there has been 
No music ! 



124 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Sappho 

No ; nor need of music here ! 
For lips that press on Hps can ne'er lament, 
And song, Alcaeus says, is born of grief. 
You, you it was that made the throbbing lyres 
All vain and empty seem, you, you it was 
That stilled the singing voices, that dusk hour 
Amid the tangled mastic, when you bore 
Me up the cliffs in your bronzed arms and kissed 
Me on the mouth, and taught me that our mad. 
Glad, careless youth was lost, and left our world 
A world of moving shadows and of dream. 
And made me love you as I love you now — ' 
O Phaon, tell me you will never change ! 

Phaon 

See, slow of speech I am, as all men are 
Who fare upon the ocean and have known 
Its loneHness ! I scarce can say the words 
That seem to die upon my lips, and yet 
You know I love you — love you ! 

Sappho {rapturously) 

Breathe those words 
A thousand times, and still some music new 
Shall throb and murmur through each uttering ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 125 

Yes; yes; I know how at our feeble lips 

The words e'er beat and flutter and fall back, 

The wings of love are held like prisoners ! 

If mortals all wxre lovers there should be 

No music and no need of music here ! 

That much this honeyed month with you, my own. 

Has taught me ! 

Phaon 

Have you never dreamed of home 
And Lesbos? 

Sappho 

Only of those days when you 
And I were happy there — those golden days 
Down by the sea, those idle afternoons 
When you and I and all the world were young, 
And from the sands we watched the opal sails 
And waded out into the pale green waves, 
Wet to our golden knees. Then you would stoop 
And lift me to the wave-worn galley deck, 
Lapped by the tremulous low Lesbian surf. 
And then w^hen evening came, back through green 

waves 
We plunged and swam with laughter, side by side ! 

Phaon 

You seemed more water-n}Tnph than woman, more 
A child of Cyprian foam than mortal flesh ! 



126 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Sappho 

And often, when you pointed out the path 

Your outbound sail would take, to Leucate, 

Past Chios and Nakaria, on and on. 

Past Myconos and Naxos, cleaving west 

Through all the flashing Cyclades, and on 

Still westward, on past Creta low and dim 

Along the southern skyline, and still on 

Past thunderous Malea, beating up 

The blue Ionian, on, until you. saw 

The tall Leucadian cliffs so white and calm 

Above the azure water — then I thought 

You were indeed a god, of wind and storm, 

With all your sea-bronze and your fearless eyes. 

Round you a wonder fell, the wonder of 

Dark shores I knew not of, and day by day 

I watched for your return, and vaguely mourned 

Each wind and tide that carried you away ! 

Yes, like a god you seemed in that glad youth 

Of dreamy hours and languorous afternoons 

When close beside the murmuring sea -we walked. 

Then all the odorous summer ocean seemed 

A pale green field where foam one moment flowered 

Along the shaUows and the golden bars. 

And then was gone, and ever came again — 

A thousand blossom-burdened Springs in one. 

A god you seemed to me, and I was more 

Than happy, and at little things we laughed ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 127 

Phaon 

And how we plunged and splashed deep in the cool 
Green waves — like Tethys and Oceanus, 
You said it was, upon the uttermost 
Last golden rampart of the world ! 

Sappho {still musingly) 

Yes . . . yes . . . 
Then would we rest, and muse upon the sands, 
Heavy with dreams, and touched with some sad peace 
Born of our very weariness of joy. 
While drooped the wind and all the sea grew still. 
And unremembered trailed the idle oar, 
And no leaf moved, and hushed were all the birds, 
And on the shoals the soft low ripples lisped 
Themselves to sleep, and sails swung dreamily, 
And the azure islands floated on the air! 

Phaon 
Was't years ago, or only yesterday? 

Sappho 

Then all your body seemed a temple white 
To me, and I a seeker who could find 
No god beyond the marble, no soft voice 



128 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Beyond the carven silence — yet I kneeled 

And asked no more, and knew that I must love ! 

The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek, 

The streams of life sang through your violet veins, 

The midnight velvet of your tangled hair 

Lured like a cooling rill my passionate hands. 

The muscles ran and rippled on your back 

Like wind on evening waters, and your arm 

Seemed one to cherish, or as sweetly crush. 

The odor of your body sinuous 

And saturate with sun and sea-air was 

As Lesbian wine to me, and all your voice 

A pain that took me back to times unknown. 

And when you swam bare-shouldered out to sea, 

Then, then the ephemeral glory of the flesh, 

The mystic sad bewilderment of warmth 

And Hfe amid the coldness of its world 

Was like a temple with the god restored. 

It seemed so pitiful, so fragile there, 

Poised like a sea-bird on some tumbling crest, 

Calling so faintly back across the storm, 

That one must love it as a tender flower. 

That one must guard it as a little child. 

It must have been some spirit of the Sea 

Crept through our veins in those long afternoons, 

For wave by wistful wave strange moods and dreams 

Stole over us — and then you turned and kissed 

Me on the mouth ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 129 

Phaon {bending over her) 

... As I must ever do — 
But listen where some restless woman sings 1 

Out of the gloom, softened by distance, sounds the voice 
of a woman, singing to a cithara. The two figures 
on the cliff are poised motionless, listening, and 
slowly a drifting cloud dims the clear blue-white 
light of the full moon. 

The Voice sings 

When you lie in dewy sleep, 

And the night is dark and still, 
O that Voice which seems to creep 

From beyond some barrier hill ! 

O that sound, not wind or sea. 
From no bird or woodland blown, 

Bearing you away from me. 

Crying " One shall go alone ! " — 

Like a ghost that will not rest, 

Calling, calling us apart. 
Where you dream, Love, on my breast. 

Where you breathe close on my heart ! 

O that Cry, so far and lone, 

Mourning as the night grows old, 



I30 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

For the tears as yet unknown, 
For the parting still untold ! 

Then for nights you know not of, 

You who lie so near in sleep — 
Long I watch beside you, Love, 

Long and bitterly I weep ! 

Phaon {repeating the words) 

Long I watch beside you. Love, 
Long and bitterly I weep ! 
But yours this music is — it is the song 
Called " Sleep and Love ! '^ 

Sappho 

I was a dreaming girl 
When first I wove the fancy into words — 
I scarcely knew the meaning of the mood 
I toyed so lightly with ! 

Phaon 

To me it seems 
Too mournful. 

The night has been slowly turning darker. They stand 
outlined against the distant sea, still silver-white 
with the moon. A sense of awe creeps into their 
voices as they speak. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 131 

Sappho 

Yes, to-night it casts a chill 
Across my spirit. It thrusts upon my- heart 
The weight of all the tears that eyes have wept 
Because of love, since first the world began. 
Felt you my body shiver ? And a cloud 
Has crept across the moon ! What makes the night 
Seem passion-worn and old and touched with calm, 
So suddenly? 

Phaon 

'Tis nothing but a cloud 
Across the moon's face. 

The liquid notes of a nightingale float through the night, 
Sappho starts up, raptly, listening to the bird. 

Sappho 

Listen. . . . Like the plash 
Of water turned to music still it sounds ! 
A nightingale ! It is a nightingale — 
To swear the world is young again, and love 
Shall live forever. Oh, my Phaon, come 
And creep a little closer, while it sings ! 

She moves slowly i^i the direction of the sound, Phaon 
still clinging indolently to her hand as she draws 
away. 



132 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon 

'Twill only lure you on, and creep away 
Between the leaves, and seem an empty Voice 
Along the echoing hillside. 

Sappho 
Come, oh, come! 

She goes slowly, with intent and upturned face, walking 
heedless towards the sound as Phaon speaks again. 
It grows still darker, and the figures seem almost 
ghostly in the half-light. 

Phaon 

Then I must burn a signal to my men, 
For I see lights on shore, new lights at sea, 
And torches moving by the outer cliff. 

He twists three handjuls of dried grass loosely together, and 
three times hums a signal from the cliff-edge, lighting 
his beacon on the smouldering urn-fire at the atlar. 
The drifting fiame lights up his bronzed face and 
figure. As he stands there, peering out for an answer- 
ing signal, Inarchus and a group of armed hoplites 
enter from the rear. The men carry flaring torches. 
Their armor sounds noisily through the quietness, 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 133 

and Phaon wheels about with resentment, eyeing 
the intruders almost angrily, but otherwise unmoved. 

Inarchus {with the gruff, deep-chested voice of a grizzled 
veteran, bluff, matter-of-fact, authoritative) 

You, there — what man are you ? 

Phaon 

First tell me then 
What fish are you? 

Inarchus 
Men, hold your torches close ! 

They swing about, circling Phaon with light. He 
starts back in anger as the smoking torches flare in 
his face. 

Phaon 

Stand back ! Stand back there with your stinking brands, 
Or by the gods, you go across this cHfif, 
And drink a tierce of brine ! 

The men fall hack a little, hut Inarchus remains unmoved. 

What seek you here? 



134 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Inarchus 
Is your name Phaon? 

Phaon 
Phaon once it was ! 

The hoplites remain motionless, while Inarchus bends 
over a scroll oj parchment, under one oj the torches. 

Inarchus 

Phaon, of Chios born, but many years 
Of Lesbos, once a ferry-man to Mysia, 
And now the master of a ship that plies 
From Lemnos down to Cyprus, and still out 
As far as Sicily, and north at times as far 
As Leucate? 

Phaon 

I am that selfsame man. 

Inarchus 

Ho, Lesbians, stand close ! . . . Then you are charged 
Of seizing and of taking off, by force. 
To sea with you the girl Omaphale, 
Daughter of Rhodopus of Pharos, born 
A free-man . . . 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 135 

Phaon 

Stop ! Who makes this charge ? 

Inarchus {ignoring his query) 

. . . The girl 

Thus seized, abducted, and betrayed, was held 
Against her will . . . 

Phaon 

What woman need I hold 
Against her will? 

Inarchtcs 

. . . And on your ship was forced 
To suffer . . . 

Phaon {his quick anger now aroused) 

Stop ! Enough ! This woman came 
Unforced and willingly ! 

Inarchus {cynically) 

This shall be seen. 

Phaon 
Has she thus spoken? 

Inarchus 

She has spoken naught . . . 



136 SAPPHO IN ZEUCADIA 

Phaon 
Then who confronts me with this charge? 

Inarchiis 

'Twas laid 
By one in Lesbos. 

Phaon 

Not the girl herself? 



Inarchus 

By* one who is esteemed of Pittacus 

Himself, who makes the woman's cause his own ! 



Phaon 
And is this man sometimes Alcaeus called? 

Inarchus 
Alcaeus, if you will. 

Phaon 



I thought as much ! 



Inarchus 
The charge was laid . . . 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 137 

Phaon {passionately) 

... By one who learned to fawn 
Round Tyrants that have taught him not to snarl ; 
By one who strums on harps and boasts how calm 
And water-cool his numbers are, yet was 
Lycimnia's, Qito's, Stheno's lover; by 
The priest of half-way passion, who is hot 
And cold by turns ; by him who struts and mouths 
Of closet intrigues up and down the streets 
Of Mytilene ! 

Inarchiis 

Cease ! For Justice mouths 
Still up and down the streets of Mytilene ! 
Sir, I am of the guard of Pittacus. 
To him three witnesses have duly sworn 
You carried off this girl, while mad with wine . . . 

Phaon 
They lie, each one of them ! 

Inarchus 

. . . While mad with wine, 
You seized and took this girl, the sister of 
Scylax, the youth Alcaeus schools in song. 
Hence, by the new decree of Pittacus, 
Who stands behind Alcaeus that the law 



138 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

May be upheld, all crime in drunkenness 
Enacted shall be met by punishment 
Two-fold ! 

Phaon 

A blow for wine, and then a blow, 
I take it, for the fall the wine compelled ! 
And so Alcaeus thus resents the hand 
That holds what ne'er was his . . . and so he fights ! 

Inarchus 

He stands within the law, my hot-eyed youth ! 
He knows his ground, and he in Lesbos said 
You should be branded like a slave re-caught, 
Ay, dragged back unto Justice by the hair ! 

Phaon's quick southern blood is now on fire, and he 
snatches out the short-hladed Lesbian sword that 
hangs at his waist. He turns on them. 

Phaon 

Enough of this ! Who drags me by the hair ? 
Who brands me like a slave? You lead these men, 
You seem to be the mouth-piece of this king 
In Lesbos who ordains how men shall love 
And shall not love ! I say this woman came 
To me of her free will. And you have said 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 



139 



That like a street- cur with a bone, I caught 
And seized and carried her away ! You stand 
And cry such things ! Great gods, no breathing man 
Speaks words Hke this to me — you hireUng dog 
Of harlot-mongers, we shall fight this out ! 

Inarchus 

I do not fight with brawlers of the sea. 
With every cut-throat who has smelt of pitch 
And carried off a woman ! 

Phaon 

Mark you this: 
Here stands a hawser-puller you shall fight ! 
Here stands an anchor-scraper who will make 
You eat your liar's oaths, or die of it ! 

Inarchus (who now holds himself in with a visible ejjort) 
No, I am here the servant of the Law , . . 

Phaon 

Then say this woman was not seized by me, 
Or Law and you are liars ! 

Inarchus 

What you seized 
Or left unseized, is not for me to say ! 



I40 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Phaon 

And there again you lie. . . . You could have sought 
This woman out, and from her mouth have learned 
The truth itself. Instead of that you take 
The pay of slanderers, and nose through mire 
For money ! 

Inarchus 

Check this passion, or by all 
The gods of war, your tongue shall taste my steel! 

Phaon 

I feed on steel when cowards such as you 
Hold forth a platter ! Come ! I love to spit 
Fat-legged defamers, pompous cavillers. 
Red-nosed deriders . . . 

Inarchus {beyond control now) 

Stop; we two shall fight; 
We two shall fight, you Fury of the Deep, 
You tunny spiced with brine ! Come ; we shall fight ! 

Inarchus discards his heavy metal shield, and flings 
down his spear, keeping only his short-bladed Grecian 
sword. The torch-bearers fall back and range them- 
selves in a wider but regular circle about the two com- 
batants. Inarchus faces the infuriated Phaon with the 
contemptuous pity of a seasoned soldier for an unequal 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 141 

foe, with the forbearance of a misunderstood man 
forced into an undesired fight. Then the momentary 
silence is broken by the voice of Sappho, sounding 
clear, mellow, unexpected, out of the gloom. It is 
a call that is rich and low, alluring and warm. As 
Phaon hears it he rememhers. A change creeps 
over him ; he awakens, as from a dream, and uncon- 
sciously draws back. Then his arm slowly falls , 
down to his side. 

Sappho 

My Phaon, are you coming? I have found 
The thicket, and the nightingale has sung 
Of love, love, love to me, until my arms 
Are aching for you? Are you coming soon? 

Phaon 
Her voice? (Inarchus wheels about in amazement) 

Inarchus 

What girl is this that floats between 
The trees? 

Phaon 

It must not be ! No, no ; not now ! 

Inarchus 

Who is this virgin lost in th' moonlight there? — 
How many women woo you, in the year? 



142 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Phaon 

She must not know ! This can not be to- 
It must not be ! 

Inarchus 

How now? What must not be? 

Phaon 
I was a fool ... I cannot fight with you ! 

Inarchus 

gods of war, what weather-cocks we are I — 
This fight you hungered for, and you shall have ! 

Phaon 

No; I was Wind; I must not, can not, fight! 
Oh, more in this there is than you can know; 
Yet listen, for beneath the gods I speak 
The utter truth ! If I have done aught wTong 

1 shall still answer for it. But this girl 
Omaphale, of her own choosing, made 

My ship her home till one short journey's end ! 
It was a youthful folly, and naught else, 
A wildness of the blood, a weakness shown 
And set aright. A coast girl she had been, 
And swam out like a nereid to my prow 
When we were in the harbor. She would sit 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 143 

Upon the galley's thwart and shyly laugh 

And talk with me. She month by month would watch 

For my return. Then one day when we sat 

Alone upon the deck, and her dark hair 

Fell loose about her, drying in the sun, 

A silence crept upon us, and her face 

Went suddenly white and she cried out to me: 

" Oh, I would go with you unto the ends 

Of all the world ! " And when I wakened she 

Lay weeping there upon my arm ! 

Inarchus 

And so? 

Sappho (from without) 
Are you not coming, Phaon? 

Phaon 

Coming — yes. 

Inarchus 

When you, good youth, have passed a further word 
Or two with me ! 

Phaon 
Then quick, what would you hear? 



144 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Inarchus 

Put up your sword ! ... I am the instrument 
And not the State you answer to. These things 
Must still be told to them who know the Law . 



They shall be told . . . 



So late, my Phaon? 



Phaon 

Sappho 

What keeps you waiting there 

Phaon 



'Tis a crying ewe 
Strayed from its flock ! Quick, closer here. My ship 
Lies yonder in the bay. At dawn we sail 
For Lesbos. There I pledge to meet this charge 
And show it false. 

Inarchus {impatiently) 
How will you show it false? 

Phaon 

By bringing my accusers and this girl 
Together, face to face. If she then says 
That I compelled her into crime, I stand 
Prepared for punishment. Alcaeus then 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 145 

Can be disposed of one who crossed his path 
More times than once. , . . Nay, send these very men 
Aboard my ship, to guard the homeward course — 
But as you are a man of justice, breathe 
No word of this mad charge to . . . 

{Sappho has entered while he speaks, and stands before 
the groups for a moment perplexed. Then she 
holds torch after torch to the immobile faces of the 
hoplites, still puzzled) 



Sappho 

But what men 



Are these? 



Phaon 
Fresh seamen, for the ship, I signalled for. 

Sappho 

Their faces all look strange. I thought I knew 

Each man among them, all who used to sing 

On deck with me the Sailors' Song to Dusk ! 

They all look hard and cold. . . . And this great cliff 

Is but the rampart from which cruel Love 

Thrusts out its lost, as from the frowning walls 

Of War the dead are flung ! 

She shudders and shrinks away, then starts, looks upward, 
and motions, almost imperiously, for the silent Phaon. 



146 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

But hark; there flutes 
And calls the nightingale again. ... So come. . . . 
This is our last night, Love, on Leucate ! 

She links her arm in Phaon^s, and they stand listening, 
with uplifted faces swept by the clear, blue-white 
moonlight breaking through soft cloud-rifts. The 
foot-soldiers stand motionless, their torches faring. 

Curtain 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 147 



ACT TWO 

An almond and olive grove above the Mgean Sea, near 
Mytilene, two weeks later. In the foreground is 
an open space, soft with turf, shadowed on the right 
by a row of cypresses, through which the pale marble 
of a headland Pharos towers and glimmers. On 
the left stretches the calm, turquoise of the water. 
Violets can be seen thick along the cliff -edge, and 
-flowers in profusion add to the coloring of the tropical 
background. It is late afternoon as the curtain 
goes up, and Alcaeus is discovered stridijig back and 
forth, lean and pale and impatient. A moiuent 
later Omaphale creeps in, looks about, and turns to 
Alcaeus with what is half a sob and half a gasp of 
disappointment. She is a slender, white-faced young 
girl with tragic and haunted eyes. 



Omaphale 
He is not here? 

Alcaeus 

Did Zetes of the Guard 
Give you the message ? 



148 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Omaphale {still peering about) 

Yes. ... He is not here ! 

Alcaeus 

Then what we two would speak of must be held 
In secrecy. 

Omaphale 

I know . . . But where is he? 
You promised that my Phaon would be here ! 

Alcaeus 
Your Phaon ! Girl, when was this Phaon yours ? 

Omaphale 



I loved him, sir 



Alcaeus 



She loved him ! So, indeed, 
Have other women done, and little good 
E'er came of it. If this man could be torn 
To pieces as Actaeon, or as Pentheus was, 
And parcelled out to them he claimed to love, 
Still would there be some woman unpossessed 
Of this capricious eel, this ferry-man 
That swims in amorous tears ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 149 

Omaphale 

But you have said 
That you would bring him back to me ! 

Alcaeus 

I said 
That if you acted as I may ordain 
Your lover should once more be brought to you. 

Omaphale 
What is it I must do? 

Alcaeus 

If still you wish 
To wed this Phaon, 'tis within the power 
Of Pittacus to make you man and wife — 
If such you ask. 

Omaphale 

What must I do? 

Alcaeus 

You wish 
To make him yours, to see him bound to you? 

Omaphale 

I care not if he weds me, or he comes 
And takes me quite unwed ... if only he 
Will love me ! 



150 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Alcaeus 

Yet if wedded to this man 
You still may hold him, and you will be his 
Through every change of heart, and he must house 
And clothe and feed you, as the law commands. 

Omaphale 

As he may house and feed a hungry dog, 
And love it not ! I care not for the law — 
If he will love me, that is all I ask. 

Alcaeus 

You harp on love as though it were the last 
And only thing in life ! 

Omaphale 

It is — to me ! 

Alcaeus (aside) 

It was — to me. But I am wiser now. 
Come closer while I speak — it must be brief. 
If still you love this man you shall be made 
His wife. To-night in Mytilene meets 
The Assembly, and its Council can decree 
That Phaon marry you, if you but swear 
That having lured you from your father's home, 
By force he took you off to sea, and there . . . 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 151 

Omaphale 
This is not true ! 

Alcaeus 

But truth it must be made ! 

Omaphale 
No, no ; I went of my own will ! 

Alcaeus 

Then weak 
You were, and foolish ! 

Omaphale (softly) 

Yes . . . but happy, too ! 

Alcaeus 
Why were you happy? 

Omaphale 

Was I not with him? 

Alcaeus 

Then do as I have said, and you may be 

Once more with him. Swear that, against your will 

He took you out to sea — and in one day 

All Lesbos will acclaim you as his wife ! 



152 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Omaphale 

And him — what will I be to him ? These words 
Are not the truth ! Why should I seek to hold 
His love by lies? 

Alcaeus 

You knew, and lost, his love — 
That is the final truth we two must face. 
But still the man himself comes back to you 
If you but raise a finger ! 

Omaphale 

Lost his love? 

Alcaeus 

Then you can keep him close ; then you can guard 
His coming and his going, and ward off 
Another woman's witcheries ! 

Omaphale (wanly) 

Ward off 
Another woman's witcheries ! . . . You mean 
He loves some other woman now? 

Alcaeus 

He loves 
Another woman. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 153 

Omaphale 

All . . . all these long months — 
Was she with him for all these endless months? 

Alcaeus 
They were together ! 

Omaphale {bewildered) 
And I lost his love ! 

Alcaeus {Utterly) 

Then say the word, and tear him from her arms, 
And teach him what it is to feel the teeth 
Of hunger in his heart, to know the ache 
Of empty nights, the dragging days of pain 
More desolate than any Hell, the years 
Embittered, ay, the broken life that crawls 
And whines for death ! 

Omaphale 

You hate this man I 

Alcaeus {remembering himself, and reining in his fury) 

I hold him one who should be envied more 
Than Pittacus himself ... I hate him not. 



154 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Omaphale 
From you he took this woman — Hwas from you I 

Alcaeus 
Mine she had never been ! 

Omaphale (remembering) 
But now is hisi 

Alcaeus 

— Until you say the word that brings him back ! 
Some one approaches . . . Quick ! We must be brief. 
Will you, before the Council, make this charge ? 

Omaphale 

Would I against him make this charge ? No ; no ! 
I cannot ! Oh, I cannot ! It would mean 
His empty body, his unanswering eyes. 
His sullen unconcern, his growing hate 
For me, his gaoler, and his greater love 
For that far happier woman still withheld ! 
'Twould be like creeping to the tomb of one 
We loved and lost, and gnawing on the bones 
That once embraced us ! No ... It shall not be ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 155 

Alcaeus 
The law itself may act ! ... if you will not. 

Omaphale 
I cannot act against the man I love. 

Alcaeus 

Quick, Pittacus approaches; we must not 
Be seen together. Turn and walk away 
Between the olive-trees, and look not back 
Until you seem alone. And not a word 
Of what I said until you meet me here 
At nightfall. 

Omaphale (bewildered and broken) 
Phaon loves another ! 

Alcaeus. 

Quick, 
And think upon these things, until we meet. 

As Omaphale creeps slowly and dispiritedly away, 
Pittacus and Inarchus, in full armor, enter, followed 
by P hocus, carrying a leathern wine- sack. He is 
fat and hlowsy, and prone to drop off into sudden 
sleep. Alcaeus greets the Tyrant and his Body- 



156 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

guard, and stands beside Pittacus. Both seem lean 
and moody men preoccupied with their own thoughts 
and ends. Phocus settles himself beside a stunted 
olive-tree and slumbers. 



Inarchus 

'Tis here between the Pharos and the Sea 
These women sing ! 

Pittacus 

We know they sing, but what ? 

Inarchus 

By Pluto's bones, 'tis more than I can say ! 
But here, as you and Pittacus desired, 
I placed a guard, disguised as shepherd-boys; 
And honest Phocus as a swine-herd sat 
Close by and listened, since he has the gift 
Of making song, like good Alcaeus here. 

Alcaeus 
Now, by Apollo's harp, this is too much ! 

Pittacus 
Then tell us what was heard. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 157 

Inarchus 

In the cool of early day 
They come with cithara and harp and lyre 
And plectrum', with outlandish instruments 
Of string and w^ood, inlaid with ivory, 
And some with gold, and squat between this grove 
And yonder cypresses. 

Pittacus (impatiently) 

But what was said 
Between these women? What songs were sung? 

Inarchus 

I am a rough man, sir, a son of War, 
Unschooled in twiddling thumbs on things of gold 
And ivory. 'Twere best ask Phocus here; 

{He kicks Phocus to awaken him) 

His trade is making song ! Ho, Phocus, wake. 

Phocus 

By Bacchus, now, I must have had a wink 
Of sleep ! {He yawns and stretches, lazily) 

Inarchus 

Tell us what amorous breed o' song 
Your swine-herd ears were fed on yester-morn ! 



158 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phocus 

What breed o' song ! Song fit for one that was 
In truth a swine-herd ! Sirs, such sorry stuff 
That I all but foreswore Euterpe's cause 
And turned to honest labor — for this talk 
Of Sappho and her school disgorges me ! 

Alcaeus {aside) 
But, mark you, not of words ! 

Phocus 

I could have shown 
Your Lesbos, ay, and Athens, what true song 
And singing is, but paugh ! they'd know it not ! 
This world of ours grows worse, sirs, year by year, 
And all they take to now is sham and sound ! 

Pittacus {to Alcaeus) 
Oh, muffle somewhat these Mygdonian pipes! 

Phocus 

Why, song's not what I well remember it — 

There was in Samnos, when I was a boy, 

A lean old goat-herd — what a drunkard, too ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 159 

Alcaeus {to Pittacus) 
Who died of a grape seed in the wind-pipe, sir! 

Phociis 

— Who strung, across a shark's-jaw on a box 
Of cedar dipped in beeswax, five short strings, 
And twanged them with a Kttle brazen thumb, 
And made up songs about the early days. 
When life was worth the living, giving us 
Most wondrous music — that I mind right well ! 

Pittacus 

But we are like all Greece ; we still would know 
Of Sappho's singing ! 

Phocus 

Sappho's singing — paugh ! 
The lady, mark you, sir, I much esteem. 
And hold no quarrel with — 'tis but this stuff 
Of burning fire and brimstone, and the mouth 
Of black volcanoes boiling up with love 
That scorches half of Lesbos ! I could take 
A syrinx made of willows and out-sing 
This walking cithara, if only men 
Would come and listen ! 

{He drinks and settles hack, as if making ready to sleep) 



l6o SAPPHO IN ZEUCADJA 

Alcaeus 
As we do, alas ! 

Pittacus 

Enough of this fat wine-sack ! Let me know 
What you have noted ! 

Inarchus 

Sir, as I have said, 
This Sappho that you bade me watch so close 
Comes forth and talks with them, all draped in flowers, 
And schools them in the mincing of big words 
To foolish sounding music ! What might pass 
Between them more I know not. But 'tis here 
They come and sit and brood above the sea, 
Like mooning cliff-birds ! 

Pittacus 
Men and girls alike? 

Inarchus 

No; girls alone — grown girls — fine amorous-eyed 
Deep-bosomed women, who should love and mate 
With men like me, and bear us soldiers, sir. 
To laugh at Solon, and have Lesbos feared ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA i6l 

Pittacus 
And who shall fear an island full of harps? 

Inarchus 

I am a bluff man, sir, and what it means, 
This singing of white virgins, I know not ! 
But when I was a youth no girls sat down 
With girls, and strummed on wires of twisted gut 

Alcaeus 

Mark you his words ! There lies the only way 
This woman can be met and overthrown ! 
Since Athens crowned her for her singing here 
They wait upon her like a goddess ! 

Pittacus 

True! 
And for a crown of olive ! Yesterday 
My chariot-wheels rang through deserted streets 
And not a slave-girl watched me as I went. 
But on the wharves all Mytilene cheered; 
The harbor rocked with roses, and the ships 
Lay smothered under blossoms, and a barge 
Of myrtle-branches and shrill-singing girls 
Went from the Western Quay, and boys swam out 



l62 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Beyond the Second Bar — all, all to meet 
Her sail — the sail of Sappho coming back 
To Lesbos ! 

Alcaeus 

Yet you always scoffed at Song ! 

Pittacus 

And every way she turned were cries and tears, 
And every street she walked was paved with leaves 
Of oleander ! 

Alcaeus 

And you scoffed at Song! 

Pittacus 

I knew no need of Song. I had my work — 
My work that led me on by paths austere 
And walked beside me with its patient eyes 
And seemed forever mirthless. Yet when life 
Grew wise and hard and empty, and the friends 
Of youth all fell away, 'twas in this friend, 
'Twas in this comrade with the quiet eyes 
And solemn brow, I found my final peace, 

Alcaeus 

And she will come and overthrow that peace 
With other friends — for she is loved of all 
Your people, and she sways them at a word ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 163 

Pittacus 

Ay, sways them as a wine-vat sways a mob ! 

Alcaeics 

But still she sways them ! Should they see her go 
From Lesbos, as you threatened, at a word 
The island would take fire and rage and sweep 
With one unending " Down with Pittacus ! " 

Pittacus 

I have scant fear of that ! Much more I fear 

What this poor land may fall to ! Think of it 

In hands like Sappho's, drugged with sighs and song ! 

As well ask butterflies to fight for us, 

Ask larks to haul the iron-rimmed wheels of state ! 

Too well I see it ! This shall be the home 

Of weaklings; while some sturdier land unknown 

To us shall cub rough-hearted men of war, 

Men strong and ruthless, ravenous, uncouth, 

To sweep upon us with their hurrying hordes 

And grind our gentle hands and golden harps 

Beneath barbarian heels. Wine, wine I hate. 

And Sappho hate — and both shall be put down ! 

Alcaeus 

You of To-morrow dream : she sings To-day ! — 
I thought and sang of both, and neither won ! 



164 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Pittaciis 

Ah, yes ! This crown they gave her — was it not 
Once offered you? 

Alcaeus 

I sang not for the mob ! 
They howled for love and wine and rhapsody; 
And to the songs I make must ever cling 
Some touch of tears and twilight. It may be 
That I, Hke Phocus there, was born before 
My time. So when I saw that I should stand 
Against a woman, I withdrew ! 

Pittaciis 

Withdrew, 
And let a Sappho win ! It has been said 
You loved this woman? 

Alcaeus 

Sir, she has been loved 
By many, and because of that, perchance. 
She is as hard to combat as to win ! 

Pittacus 
I fear no woman ! 

Alcaeus 

Since you fought with none ! 
Nay, strike not openly, but undermine 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 165 

In secrecy this wall that neither you 
Nor I can ever scale. 

Pittacus 

What mean you? Speak! 

Alcaeus 

I mean it has been said this woman's wiles 
Are strange; she makes our wives forget their homes 
And young girls who have never loved awake 
And cry for tender words, and maidens, too. 
That kissed o'er close, still seek another's mouth; 
Half -mad with music, makes our women leave 
Their waiting lovers and creep after her 
With pleading eyes, and cling about her neck 
And call her beautiful and passionate names ! 
And all the w^orld has known that all her songs 
Are drenched in tumult and with rapture washed. 

Pittacus 

Nay, start me not to storming on this string 
That I have thumbed so often ! She it is 
Who leads my men away, and plants their spears 
In colonnades, where rose and meadow-sweet 
May climb, and little garden-birds may chirp ! 
She is the author of our idle days. 
Our festivals of folly crowned with flowers, 
Our bacchanalian midnights mad with wine 



l66 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

And song and reeling dance ; our lovers pale 
And silent in the gloom, who neither laugh 
Nor move where gleam the white of arms 
And marbled throats and limbs voluptuous ! 
Oft have I stumbled on this cyathus 
That over-runs with fire, and marked the ways 
Of those who follow her, the fearless laugh. 
The muffled stir of torches through the leaves, 
The flight, denial, capture, and the faint 
Last struggles of some lover lost in sighs 
And swooning unconcern — and through it all 
The throbbing of the lyres, the drone and beat 
Of citharas, the broken woodland chants. 
The midnight sorceries, where they who weave 
O'er-sweetened words to music sit and dream 
By drooping oleanders, flinging lust 
And enervating passion out across 
This land of lovers ! Paugh, I hate it all ! 

Alcaeus 

Your people should be told, then: " Here is one 
Who would corrupt the rose of Lesbian youth, 
Who leaves a blight upon our homes, a taint 
Upon our island ! " 

Pittacus 
Yes; but to what end? 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 167 

* Alcaeus 

That where we idle wait the gods may act ! 
The seed thus planted quietly shall grow, 
Shall spread suspicion, and shall pave the way 
For grim uprootings. When the time is ripe 
Proclaim the woman for the thing she is ! 

Phocus 
I must have slept a wink, and known it not ! 

{He rises and quietly drinks as the sound of music and 
chanting voices floats softly up jrom the sea below 
them) 

Pittacus 

Listen, what sound is that? 

Alcaeus 

It is the song 
All Lesbos sings at sunset ! 

Pittacus 

All Lesbos sings? 

Alcaeus 

The Sailors' Hymn to Sunset it is called; 
From every harbor where a tired oar drips, 



l68 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Or rope is tied, or weary anchor dropped, 
This selfsame music rises from the sea. 

Phociis (aside, muttering) 

That is the wide-mouthed rubble that the men 
Of this mad Lesbos take, and leave unsung 
My Shepherds' Song to She-Goats, writ by me 
In pure ^Eolic, in Ionic, too, 
That ripples like a rill ! (He sighs and sleeps) 

Pittacus 

Whence came this song? 

Alcaeus 

It comes from Sappho ! Listen ; next to that 
They call the Song For Lovers, and its mate, 
The Sailors' Hymn to Sunrise, 'tis most sung. 

The two men turn towards the Sea, listening. 

And wonderful it is ! From ship to ship. 
From cape to misty cape, from wharf to wharf, 
From harbor-town to headland and still on 
To harbor-town it rises, eve by eve. 
It mounts and swings until a chain of song 
Round Lesbos has been woven ! 

Phocus stirs and wakens, rubbing his eyes. Then he 
shows that he is listening to the speakers preoccupied 
on the cliff. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 169 

Pittacus 

I thought as much ! 
This woman stands a menace and a shame — 
She must be silenced. 

Alcaeus 

Then, before I go, 
Let me one sentence add : 'Twere best to strike 
At her through Phaon — cut the cypress low, 
And let the ivy wither, where it lies. 
Of Phaon's deeds you know: should he go down, 
Her desperate love for him would spell her own 
Untimely ruin. Let them fall as one ! 

Pittacus 

She has her following, such as it is ! 

We must strike cautiously. This Phaon boasts 

That he has talked with goddesses, you say? 

Alcaeus 

He is the man who claims Poseidon speaks 
With him across his gunwale. Still he tells 
How on a night of storm and rain he found 
A woman muffled in a gloomy cloak. 
Waiting without a word beside his boat — 
Who made a sign, whereat he rowed her out, 



170 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Against his will, into the driving spray. 
And all the while her woman's dreaming eyes 
Shone out like stars, and through the tempest flashed 
Her white face like a flame, and filled his heart 
With fear and wonder. And they reached the land; 
And she passed silently out through the night, 
And left no sign or footprint on the sand; 
And he has claimed she was a goddess. 

Pittacus {cynically) 

He 
May need her help ! 

Alca^us 

We boast no goddesses 
To fight for us, in either love or war; 
So we must stand prepared, and wait our hour . . . 

Pittacus 
And when the time is ripe . . . 

Alcaeus 

The gods may act 
Where we have been most idle. I must go ! 

(Exit) 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 171 

P hocus {peering Uearily after Alcaeus) 

Now, by the horn of Bacchus, here will be 
Eryngo-root to spice to-morrow's talk ! {He laughs) 
But soft — there's one as lean as I am fat. 

Omaphale creeps in, as he speaks. Her face is color- 
less, her hair dishevelled. She is about to speak to 
Pittacus, hut shrinks away, with a gesture of fear 
and despair. A look of hopelessness is on her face, 
as she advances toward the cliff-edge. 

Pittacus {wrapt in thought, unconscious of Inarchus 
standing so close beside him, in the statue-like im- 
mobility of the long-trained soldier) 

The gods may act. . . . And out of hate and love, 
Entangled and embattled, she may fall. 
As others fell ! {He sees Omaphale) 

And there, I take it, walks 
One of her Maenad band, chalk-faced and frail 
And rapt of eye, a Bassarid grown sick 
Of too much love ! 

Inarchus 

It is Omaphale ! 

Pittacus 
Omaphale ! For something lost she seeks ! 



172 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Inarchus 
What seek you, girl ? 

Omaphale (abstractedly) 

The Sea ! 

Inarchus (bluntly) 

For Phaon's ship? 

Omaphale 

He has been taken from me. . . . No, the Sea 
Is all they left me. . . . 'Tis the only way ! 

She shudders and draws back, as she peers from the verge. 

But oh, I cannot do it ! I am weak ! 
The water is so far ! The wheeling birds 
Still make me dizzy ! Oh, it is too hard ! 

She lowers her hands, looks up at the sky, the cliff, the 
sea, gazing slowly about her. Then she closes her 
eyes, and gropes brokenly toward the sea, her hands 
once more out- stretched. 

But now, it must be done ! 

She is on the very verge when Inarchus seizes her. She 
struggles fiercely as he drags her back. 

Oh, let me go ! 
I only ask to die — that, that is all ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 173 

Phociis 
The girl would kill herself ! 

Omaphale (struggling ) 

I want to die! 

Pittacus 

What is this madness, girl ? (She is silent) 

What is your name? 
And why should one so young fight bitterly 
To go to such a death ! 

Phocus (sadly) 

She has been crossed 
In love, as I in Samnos once was crossed ! 

Omaphale, wild-eyed and dumb, gazes at them. She 
breaks away, but is caught by Inarchus. 

Inarchus 
What shall I do with her? 

Pittacus 

The girl is weak; 
She shakes and quivers like a captured bird! 



174 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

We may have been too rough ! Some woman's hand 
Should hold her, and a woman's comrade voice 
Should question with her softly ! Tell me, girl, 
What happened you? 

Phocus 

Ho, here are women now ! 
Quick, call them you. From me they might construe 
One word as an advance, and hold me to it ! 

Erinna, Atthis and Megara, crowned with flowers, have 
entered while he speaks. They carry musical 
instruments. 

Erinna {dropping her cithara) 

What has this woman done, to be so held? 

Inarchus 

Just what she did I know not, but I think 
She must be mad, for she would throw herself 
From off the cliff ! 

Erinna 

Why, she is but a girl ! 

Omaphale turns away, with still another effort to reach 
the cliff-edge. 

O Atthis, hasten by the Shepherd's Path, and call 
To Sappho! 

Exit Atthis 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 175 

Phocus 

Why call for Sappho ? 

Erinna 

Knows she not 
The most assuaging words, the softest tones, 
To utter to a heart that sorrows wring? 

Phocus 

What, Sapphic music at a time like this ! 

The girl wants wine, good wine, to warm her blood 

And make her spirits dance ! 

He offers her his wine-flask, hut the girl turns away, 
still silent. 

The girl is mad ! 

He offers it again. 
There is no question but the girl is mad ! 
He drinks, deeply, and replaces flask, with lips smacking. 

Erinna 
Oh, see if Sappho comes. 

Megara 

'Tis Atthis calls. 
She answers; yes, 'tis Sappho. 



176 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Atthis {entering^ breathless) 

She is here. 

They step back. Sappho enters with an armful of 
golden samphirej and a lyre oj silver and gilded cedar- 
wood. She looks from jace to jace. There is a 
suggestion oj power, oj imperiousness, in her bearing. 

Sappho 

Why have you called me, Atthis ? Was it you, 
Erinna ? 

Erinna 
Yes, 'twas I. 

Sappho, whose eyes had met those of Pittacus, in a steady, 
combative gaze, now sees Inarchus and his captive 
for the first time. 

Sappho 

What girl is this, 
And why is she held thus, a prisoner ! 

P hocus 

Here is a girl, stark mad, who wants to die — 
And so all Lesbos bellows out for you ! 

Sappho 
For me? But why for me? 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 177 

Phocus (mincingly) 

She has a wound 
That begs the oil of Sapphic song ! She needs 
A chain of golden music round her thrown, 
To charm her back to life. Thus have I seen 
Phoenician jugglers pipe and soothe an asp 
To sleep most beautiful ! So, since she will 
Not drink of wine, let music do its worst ! 

Sappho 

Peace, peace; this girl is shaking like a leaf, 
She has been tortured by more things than fear! 
Why, child, look up at me ! You are too young 
To know what sorrow is ! These eyes are still 
Too soft to peer into the awful Night 
That never answers us, and never ends ! 

Sappho kneels and takes the girVs hands, with a sign for 
Inarchus to release her. Inarchus glances at Pittaciis. 
The latter nods, as ij in assent. Inarchus holds the 
girl by only one arm. 

Phocus 

Now, by Astarte's eyes, here stands a test ! 
Here is the first, so called, most eloquent 
Of Lesbian singers with a pretty task: 



178 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

To medicine a grief, to make this girl 
Content with life, as wine might do for me ! 

(He drinks) 
Pittacus 

You, Sappho, you forever sing of life 
And of its joys. Let, then, your lyric gift 
Lure back to love of life this broken girl 
— Ay, let it stand a test, as Phocus says ! 

Sappho 

I seek no triumph, I should ask no test 
At such a time ! For even Pittacus 
I could not toy upon a wounded heart ! 

Pittacus 

But you will talk with her, will plead with her? 

Sappho 

As I would plead with any troubled soul ! 
Release the maiden — she will not escape. 
Why, you are nothing but a girl ! 

Sappho holds the girPs face between her hands, gazing 
into it. Then she continues to speak, gradually 
growing oblivious oj those about her. 

AU life 
Should mean so much to one who still has youth ! 
These saddened lips were made for happiness 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 179 

And tender words and kisses touched with fire ! 
Such eyes as these should never mournful seem ! 
What sorrow is it makes them swim with tears 
And shakes your slender body? Speak to me 
What is it that has made all life so dark? 

Omaphale 
No longer, now, he loves me. 

Sappho 

Tell me more. 

Omaphale 
His love is dead, and I must die with it. 

Sappho 

No, no; think not because some foolish word 
Has passed between you — 

Omaphale 

Dead, his love is dead; 
He is another's now ! 

Sappho 

But love is love; 
Although the torch may fall, the sacred fire 
Endures and burns; the broken dream comes back; 



l8o SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

The voices of the Spring may pass away, 
But other Springs shall bear another song 
And life shall know some newer love ! 



Phocus (aside) 

Now, by the horn of Bacchus, here is Song 
Put into use ! 



Sappho 
Nay, speak to me! 



Omaphale 

He loves 
Another ! Let me die ! . . . 

Sappho {pleadingly J softly) 

. . . And say farewell 
To light and warmth and greenness, and go down 
To some grey world of ghosts you know not of ! 
Think, think, what life still means . . . think of the joy 
Of breathing in such beauty, dusk and dawn. 
Moonbeam and starlight, sun and wind and sea. 
The marbled cities and the silences, 
The sting and sweep of the storm on night of rain, 
The wild surf and the brine-smell and the ship 
That brings the heart we love, the tangle old 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA i8l 

Of tears and laughter, rapture and regret, 
The sheer glad careless god-like going-on 
From day to golden day, the grapeless wine 
Of music, dreaming music, to upbuild 
Ethereal homes for us when we have tired 
Of too much joy, the throats of song to lift 
Us out of loneliness and give our tears 
A touch of beauty, and the last great gift, 
The gift of Love, that makes death pitiful. 
And paves the world with wonder ! 

Omaphale 

All I asked 
Was that he love me — and he loves me not ! 

Pittacus {aside to Inarchus) 

Behold where Phaon comes, mark well each word 
That passes here between the two ! 

Enter Phaon, who stands unnoticed on the outskirts of the 
preoccupied group. 

Sappho 

Tell me 
The name of him who has forgotten you ! 

Omaphale 
I cannot tell ! 

Sappho 

Say where he may be found. 



l82 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Omaphale shakes her head, obdurately. Sappho still 
looks at her silent face, in wonder. 

Then you can hate him not? You love him still? 
Could you not steal unto his couch and plunge 
A knife into his sleeping heart? And she, 
The one who came between you — would you kill 
This cruel woman with her careless smiles ? 

Omaphale 

I love this man so much that I would die 
To see him happy ! 

Sappho 

But what man is this 
Who merits such mad love? 

Omaphale (looking away and seeing Phaon, in one in- 
voluntary screa?n) 

Phaon ! 

Sappho 
Why Phaon? What is Phaon unto you? 

Omaphale 

O Phaon, tell them that you were, you are, 
The man I loved . . . tell them ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 183 

Sappho {pointing to Phaon) 

Know you this man ? 

Pittacus 

Come, answer quickly, child ! 

Sappho 

Know you this man ? 

Enter Alcaeus, who watches silent and uneasy. 

Omaphale 

He was — no, no ; this means some woe 

I cannot understand. What makes your face 

So white ? You shrink and quiver and your eyes 

Are like dead women's eyes ! This means some harm 

To him ! No, no, / never knew this man! 

Pittacus 
You knew him not? 

Omaphale {the falsehood only too obvious) 

No ! No ! I knew him not ! 

{To Alcaeus) You, you can tell them he is innocent ! 

She starts towards Phaon with outstretched hands, but is 
held back by the stolid Inarchus. 

Alcaeus 
The girl is lying. 



l84 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Sappho 

Lying? 

Alcaeus 4 

Yes; she says 
These words to shield the man. 

Sappho 

Whatman? Whatman? 

Pittacus 

What man would hide and skulk and wait behind 
A woman's lie? 

Alcaeus 

The man who took this girl 
And loved her till she grew a weariness 
To him, the man who bore her off to sea 
Against her will, and found in other lands 
Another lover . . . 

Sappho 

Then his name ! His name ! 

Alcaeus 
His name is Phaon. 

Omaphale 

No — he took me not 
Against my will. I loved him, and I went. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 185 

Phaon 

The woman speaks the truth ! I skulk behind 
No lies; and you, my sweet Alcaeus, you 
Shall answer for this thing, or — 

Pittacus 

Silence ! 

Sappho {starting hack, shaking) 

So, 
This is the truth ! — And this the man I sought ! 

Phaon {to Alcaeus) 

Oh, you, you half-way lover of women, you 
Shall answer for these lies — you Janus-face ! 

Omaphale {weeping before Pittacus) 
We went as lovers, sir, as happy lovers ! 

Sappho 

This is the truth, indeed, the woman speaks ! 
Oh, this is more than I can bear ! They went 
As lovers, till he looked about and found 
Another lover from another land ! 



l86 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phocus (wagging his head) 

If you would shake the tree, then must you sort 
The fruit ! 

Omaphale 

Will you forgive me, Phaon? 

Sappho 

Go — 

Go to your lover ! Go, I give him back 
To you ! Go there into his arms again ! 
He waits for you — he is impatient, see ! 

Phaon 
Stop — this is mockery ! 

Sappho 

See, I have sung 
You back upon his breast. Look, I have saved 
You from the Sea, that you may kiss his mouth! 
Yes ! Yes ! I, I have saved you for this man ! 
With words as soft as first-born love I brought 
You back to him ! Most bravely, was it not, 
Great Pittacus, I cooed and pleaded here, 
I sounded like a gymnast of the wires. 
The glory and the wonder of all life ! — 
But I shall wring your State with no more song, 
And I shall mouth no more, and plead no more ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 187 

She flings her harp flashing and twirling into the Mgean, 

This is the end of love ! This is the end 
Of faith in man, in Hfe, in every god 
That mocks your temples ! 

Phociis {aside) 

iEtna, to a turn! 

Erinna {weeping) 
O Sappho, come away ! 

Atthis 
Oh, come with us! 

Sappho 

Yes, I will come with you; the ghost of me 
Will walk and talk with you — but I am dead ! 
This man has killed all life, all love, in me, 
All happiness, all music, and all song ! 

Phaon 

Nay, hear me, but a word . . . 

Sappho 

Wait, I shall speak! 
Alcaeus, Phocus, you have wooed me both — 



l88 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Sought me for many years, and day and night 
Sighed after me ! Behold, I am for sale, 
For sale to him who takes me where I stand ! 
I, Sappho, Queen of Song, ay. Queen of Love, 
The Tenth Muse after whom the others walk, 
Am I not worth the taking, one of you? 

Alcaeus (his lean face blanching at her words) 

And you will hold to this ? 

Sappho 

I hold to it ! 
I hold to anything that crushes him 
That I have learned to hate ! You fear this man ? 
Are both of you afraid? 

Phocus 

Now, by the horn 
Of Bacchus, lady, I did love you well — 
But weeping for it left me scant o' breath ! 

Phaon, who has snatched out his sword, now turns on 
the more dangerous and determined Alcaeus. 

Phaon 

I care not who he is, but by the gods 
Of seamen I will spit the first rash fool 
Who listens to this woman ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 189 

Sappho 

One of you, 
Which one of you will take me where I stand? 

Phaon 
Who does so, first must taste this bitter steel ! 

Alcaeiis {aside to Phaon) 
This is no place for brawling ! 

Phaon {desperately) « 

What, you still 
Would woo your old-time love? 

Alcaeus 

I stand unarmed — 
And thank your gods for it ! But meet me here 
At dawn, and you and I shall fight this out, 
And I shall kill you ! 

Phaon 

Kill me ! I could mow 
My way through fields of music-tinkler's throats, 
Dig through a mountain made of poet's hearts, 
Ay, swim and bathe in chorus-monger's blood. 
And face a dithyrambic sea of all 
The lean-gilled singers that have harped through Greece ! 



190 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Sappho {distraught) 

Kill him, Alcaeus, for he killed my joy 

In life; he killed my hope of happiness; 

He killed my new and tender love ... he killed 

The careless singing voices of my heart ! . . . 

Oh, kill him . . . kill him ... as he killed my soul ! 

White with jury, she rends and tears her robes, and sinks 
back exhausted from her jrenzy as the curtain jails. 

Curtain. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 191 



ACT THREE 

Scene: ihe same as in Act II, early the next morning. 
Erinna and Atthis^ white and worn with watching^ 
jace the sea. 

Erinna 

See, Atthis, it is morning ! 

Atthis 

What a night 
Of sorrow ! 

Erinna 

Like a child she wept and cried 
For Phaon, and then paced the echoing gloom, 
And asked if it were cruel thus to kill 
The man who made her suffer ! Then her wrath 
Broke forth again, and down on him she called 
The curses of the gods, then calmer grew, 
And fell to weeping. 

Atthis 

I have sometimes thought 
Her love was like her music when she sang 



192 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

To us at midnight. 'Tis o'er passionate, 
And seems as deep as life, as dark as death. 
And wild beyond all words ! In this our world 
There are two kinds of women: one men seek 
And desperately love, and some day leave. 
Or some day meet their death for; likewise one 
They seek not drunkenly, and yet when known, 
They labor for, and cleave to, all their years. 
And fight back from the world's end to rejoin. 
The eternal mother calm of brow, the one, 
And one, the eternal lover ! 

Erinna 

Sappho has 
The strength and fire of each ! I love her so 
I could not see her faults. 

Atthis 

She asks too much, 
And ever gives too much. She is of those 
Who threaten when they most alluring seem, 
Who menace even when they yield the most. 
Volcanic are such women: that same fire 
Which makes them dangerous and dark and cruel 
Still leaves them warm and rich and bountiful, 
And Love creeps closer, presses ever up. 
Up to the central fires, and mile by mile 
The soft audacious green of vineyard dares 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 193 

The dreaming crater. Then the outbreak comes, 
And through the red-Hpped lava and the ruin 
The world remembers ! 

Erinna 

Nay, you do her wrong. 
She bleeds when she is wounded, but her ways 
Are soft and gentle. Midnight scarce had gone 
Ere she grew calm and sought Alcaeus out. 
And called him from his home, and through the gloom 
Of his walled garden pleaded that he would 
Be merciful to Phaon. 

AUhis 

He, merciful! 



Erinna 

Alcaeus said that honor bade him meet 

The man who challenged him, yet gave his word, 

His cryptic word, that Phaon should not die, 

If she but yielded him the little ring 

Of beaten gold she wore upon her wrist ! 



Atthis 

I fear this self-contained and watchful man. 
Whose words are but a sheath to hide his thoughts. 



194 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Erinna 
I, too, I fear the outcome of it all ! 

Atthis 
If Sappho were but here ! 

Erinna {looking about) 

And Phocus, too — 
He should have come to us, an hour ago ! 
When once her woman's rage has burned away, 
She will go back to Phaon, for such love 
As she has known can wither not and die 
In one short night. 

Atthis 

If only Pittacus 
Would come to Sappho's aid ! 

Erinna 

Not Pittacus! 
Nay, Pittacus is hard and granite cold, 
His breast is adamant, his hand is steel. 
And he has dreamed that while this land endures 
His name and that of Lesbos shall be linked ! 
He wills that on each temple " Pittacus " 
Shall be inscribed in letters all of gold; 
And bitter in his mouth has been the praise 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 195 

Of Sappho; he has grown to hate her name, 
Yet fears to act. But he may make this night 
A pretext . . . See, 'tis Phocus come at last. 

Enter Phocus, panting 

Phocus 

Ho, what a climb ! Had I not stumbled on 
A snoring herdsman with a wine-sack full 
Of better life than his, I should be prone 
Beside the City Wall ! Oh, what a chmb ! 

Erinna 
But quick, what news? 

Phocus 

News? News enough to swamp 
A galley ! Pittacus is on his way ; 
Alcaeus by the herd-path also comes. 
And Mytilene crowds upon the heels 
Of Sappho, caterwauling ribald song, 
And growling curses back upon the Guard ! 
And Phaon, it is said, was put in arms. 
And then again was not, and still again 
'Tis held he was deported in the night. 
And still, once more, again, that Pittacus 
Has issued mandates there shall be no fight — 



196 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

While others whisper Phaon hurries forth 
To meet Alcaeus and fight out his fight 
Before 'tis known of ! 

Erinna {at the sound of singing) 

Listen I Hear you not ? — 
The Sailor's Hymn to Sunrise? 

Atthis 

Yes, I hear ! 

Phocus 

But I have further tidings ! First, a sip 

O' herdsman's comfort ! — Pittacus, 'tis said. 

Commands these men must neither meet nor fight. 

He knows his words are useless — mark you that ! 

But purposes to wait, and make no move 

Till this fine-feathered, anchor-fouling, swart, 

Hot-headed son o' brine called Phaon comes, 

As he will surely come, and bleats and yawls 

For clash o' swords. Thereat the waiting Guard 

Shall clap him into irons; the charge to be 

Attempt at murder on a citizen, 

The penalty whereof, and mark you this, 

Is exile ! 

Erinna 

Atthis, I must go at once 
And seek out Sappho : she must know of this ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 197 

Phocus 

Nay, wait till I unload ! 'Tis whispered round 
That yester-night the Council secretly 
Decreed that Phaon and Omaphale 
Should in the streets be married, publicly ! 
Now, once in Samnos . . . 

Erinna {to Atthis) 

Wait on my return ! 

Exit Erinna 

Phocus (swelling with importance) 

And mark you this: the less your Sappho says 
Concerning what has been, or is to be, 
The better with you all ! For Pittacus 
And lean Alcaeus tooth and nail are set 
On her undoing. Mark you that again ! 

Atthis 

It shall not be. No; she and happiness 
Must walk together. She must live to sing 
And make life beautiful with music still ! 

Phocus 

To sing? Ay, there's the long and short of it ! 

(He drinks from his flagon) 



198 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

What song is there in these besotted days? 
A life most scandalous, and then a trick 
O' mouthing vowels, then a wanton youth 
And green-sick maid or two to syllable 
Your milk-and-water sorrows, warble out 
Your lecherous odes, and, ho, you have a poet ! 

AUhis 
A poet who is fat and full of words ! 

Fhocus (swaggering) 

Now Pittacus has told me, man to man, 
When seeking of my counsel, that our tunes 
Have turned too amorous, and must be stopped. 
And I'm behind him in it ! You talk of song, 
But once in Samnos was a lean old man 
Who strung across a shark's jaw on a box — 

AUhis 
See, see; they come . . . And Sappho is not here! 
Enter Alcaeus, armed, attended by only a young servant, 

Alcaeus 

He is not here, this man that vowed to face 
A sea of lilied singers. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 199 

Phocus 

Fear you not ! 
This hot-eyed tunny out of Pluto's ditch 
Is foaming, lashing, frothing hitherward 
Along the Shepherd's Path (The sun rises) 

. . . And as he sware 
He breaks upon us with the rising sun. 

Enter Phaon, followed by a handful of Lesbian sailors; 
sunburned, graceful, light-hearted fellows, but now 
watchful and furtive-eyed. 

Phaon 
At dawn it was to be. Well, it is dawn. 

He whips out his sword, almost gaily, tries its edge on 
his thumb, and wheels about. Alcaeus, nervous and 
unstable, not yet sure of his ends, faces his opponent. 

Alcaeus 
One w^ord, before this fight begins . . . 

Phaon 

Words! Words! 
I want no words ! My life to-day is worth 
A minnow's ransom ! There's a narrative 
In naked steel comes nearer to my wish 
Than words ! 



200 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Alcaeiis 

But things there are that we must say 
By word of mouth. Still let judicial steel . . . 

Phaon (shortly) 

These words, then, if you must: I have been told 
We two are destined not to fight this fight; 
That one who much esteems you will step in 
And stop this combat, as you stand informed ! 

Alcaeus 
This is not true ! 

Phaon {determined) 

Then show it to be false ! 
Quick ! I shall brook no quibble or delay ! 
Fight ! Fight, I charge you ! Quick, defend yourself ! 

Alcaeus {aside to servant) 

The Guard ! What keeps the Guard ! 

{To Phaon) But I would know 
For what we two are fighting here? 

Phaon 

For what? 
You know full well — a woman ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 201 

Alcaeus 

Then, we fight 
For issues closed ! This woman came to me. 

Phaon 
To you? So soon? Within a night? 

Alcaeus 

Within 
A night, since you have said it ! 

Phaon 

Liar ; still 
You swim in lies ! 

Alcaeus 

And gave this band of gold 
To be a token — Look well over it ! 

Phaon looks at the wrist-hand, incredulous; Alcaeus ^ 
thus gaining time, peers out anxiously, aivaiting 
Pittacus and the Guards. 

Phaon (quivering) 

Ha ! Now ; yes, now we fight ; we doubly need 
To know which man must die ! We doubly need 
To know how stand the gods, if this be true ! 
No more of empty words ! Come, fight it out ! 



202 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Alcaeus, about to expostulate, finds no time jor words. 
Phaon, advancing, compels him to fight. The 
crowd draws closer, in an irregular circle, with groans 
and cheers as the short-bladed swords clash and 
strike. Foot by foot Alcaeus is forced back. It 
is obvious that Phaon is driving him towards the 
cliff-edge. He is foiled in this by the sudden en- 
trance of Pittacus, breathless, followed by his Guard. 
The huge Inarchus strikes down the sword of Alcaeus, 
who is already cut on the arm. Phaon, seized from 
behind, still slashes with his sword. 

Pittacus 
What brawl is this that stains our Lesbian peace? 

A Voice 
A fight for a woman ! 

Another Voice 
Let them fight it out ! 

A Citizen 
'Twas Phaon forced him to it ! 

A Sailor 

Fight it out ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 203 

A Citizen 
He fell upon him ! 

A Citizen 

Ay, he up with sword 
And at him Hke a Fury ! Have it out ! 

A Sailor 
They fight in honest combat ! Have it out ! 

A Citizen 
Alcaeus was compelled to draw ! 

A Sailor 

You lie; 
He came at dawn to meet this man. 

Pittaciis 

Be still ! 
Who sought a Lesbian's life shall pay for it. 
Guards, put this man in chains, and hold him close. 

The hoplites seize and manacle the struggling Phaon. 
The sailors crowd close, but dare not interfere. 

Pitfacus (aside to Alcaeus) 
The gods have acted . . . With my second blow 
We shall be masters ! And this man you hate 
Will go from Lesbos stained in thought and name. 



204 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Alcaeus 
Omaphale — you hold her close ? 

Pittacus 

We hold 
Her close, assuredly. The girl must stand 
The column of our acts. This Sappho heads 
An army without arms, that secretly 
Opposes, threatens, thwarts me. Here, to-day, 
It shall be brought to issue. We shall learn 
What hand rules Lesbos still — and more there is 
In this, than but a fooKsh woman's fall! 

Alcaeus 
Then, I were best away. 

Pittacus 

Go, have your wound 
Attended, for excuse. (Aloud) But, stop; were you 
Assaulted by this man ? 

Alcaeus (showing wounded arm) 

This speaks for me ! 

Sappho enters, panting, her face pale. She is followed 
by Erinna and a group of Lesbians, bearing sickles and 
grape-knives. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 205 

Pittacus 
Assault it was. 

Sappho {authoritatively. Her gaze has been on Phaon) 
Why is this man in chains? 

Pittacus 

He broke a law of Lesbos. 

Sappho (tauntingly) 

Did he drink - 
A sip of wine? Or sing a happy chord 
Of shepherd music? 

Phocus 

Shepherd music ! Oh ! 
Oh ! Shepherd music ! That was good ! 'Twas more 
Like spouting sulphur crowned with Typhon's fire ! 

Pittacus {judicially, realizing the people before him must 
be convinced oj the justness of his action) 

This man defied the State and broke the peace 
Of Lesbos, and must suffer. I have sought 
To make this island one of temperate ways, 
And late and early I have strained and toiled 
To reach this end. Its wastrel years have left 
Its name a by-word on the lips of Greece, 



206 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

And not until its must-vats are no more, 
And all its vaults of flagoned indolence 
Are emptied, and its vineyards are destroyed, 
And all its simpering harps made into swords, 
Shall we dare hope to be a State again ! 

Sappho {defiantly) 

Then, it is worse to crush a thousand grapes, 
O, man of war, than twice a thousand lives? 
Quick, Phocus, give me of your wine to drink 
To one who knows his Lesbos ! That puts blood. 
Good Lesbian blood, in me ! Yet we had thought 
'Twas Bacchus who once called this island " home," 
And blessed our vines ! We thought Methymna saw 
The harp of Orpheus float to Lesbian shores. 
The god's own head washed high upon our sands — 
And from the dead mouth sounds of music creep 
And crown our island with its gift of song ! 

The Lesbians 
That is the truth ! 

Shepherds 

Our Sappho speaks the truth! 
Sappho 

Rail not at wine ! When Athens threatened us, 
And sentineled our shores, and sail by sail 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 207 

Shut off the Sea, and flung our ramparts down 

And left us huddled close, without defence, 

And all our cattle died for w^ant of rain. 

And drought drove all our people from the hills, 

And Lesbos had no water, none to lave 

The dying, none to give unto the sick, 

And none to mix the waiting lime and sand 

Whereof to build a wall against the foe — 

Mark you the tale — ■ 'twas from the sunburnt hills 

Our fathers tore the abundant grapes, and crushed 

The precious liquor from them, vat by vat. 

And mixed their mortar, and threw up their walls 

And fought the Athenians back into the Sea ! 

Nay, rail no more at wine, chaste Pittacus ! 

The Lesbians 

And that is truth ! Still Sappho speaks the truth ! 

Pittacus 

To-morrow, then, shall turn it to a lie ! 

Sappho 

My people, listen close ! This man of war, 
This man who walks in steel and sleeps in stone, 
While we are ramparted by rustling leaves 
And love and careless flow^ers, this same man 
Who would make fortresses of garden walls, 
And grape-fields into flashing battlegrounds, 



2o8 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Who would turn amphora and urn and bowl 
To sword and pike and helmet — he would leave 
Our towns no longer thronging-masted marts, 
But tankards of dissension and of blood ! 
He would upon the lamb drape lion-skins, 
And have us known for what we can not be ! 

Pittacus 
No — have us known not as we now are known ! 

Sappho 

He to the kilns would fling our carven faims 

And to the fire our stately marbles give — 

Our chiselled dreams that cannot draw a sword, 

Our Parian mutes that may not bear a pike! — 

And make them into lime for arsenal walls, 

And school us how to loa the a purple grape ! 

Wine — Wine ! This island sings on, floats on, wine f 

Wine roofs our homes, an d feeds our hungry mouths ; 

Our galleys freight it to the thirsty world, 

It makes the sorrowful no longer sad; 

It leaves pain unremem bered, makes us seem 

The equal of the gods ; the aged, young ; 

The sickly, well; the silent, full of song; 

The parted lover grieve not for his love ! 

It is a secret god who stoops to make 

Us rich with music ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 209' 

Phocus {aside) 
Now, by the horn, her words 



At last are wisdom ! 



Pittacus 



Stop, enough of this ! 
There shall be parted lovers that no wine 
May comfort . . . Let the prisoner stand forth. 

Sappho {desperately — in a mad torrent of defiance) 

And this is wisdom, this the heart and core 
Of that calm highest fruitage that you flaunt 
Upon your thought-fed tree of knowledge ! Oh, 
It maddens me ! These icy grandeurs make 
Me like a Maenad, make me storm and rage 
And wonder how the ruddy blood of life 
Could run so slow and pale ! You never laugh 
And never weep, men say. . . . You never know 
The meaning and the glory of the morn, 
The passion and the pathos of the dusk, 
The rapture and the wonder of all life ! 
You are a burnt-out kiln, a river-bed 
Of aching emptiness, a dried-up vat, 
A hearth without a fire, a thing of bones ! 
You have not found the secret and the swxep 
Of Music, learned the meaning of the Spring, 
Or known its soft renewals born of love 



2IO SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

And sorrow ! You have never watched the Sea 
Without some miser's thought of tax and toll, 
Nor bent above the crimson of the rose 
Without some rapine thought of battle-fields ! 
Though you should live till your last hair is white. 
And I and this same man you hold in chains 
Should die this moment ... we have known of life 
And earth far more than you could ever know ! 

A cry oj approval breaks from the people. 

Pittaciis 

Enough of this ! Am I a king of sots ? 

Our cities and our veins have come to flow 

With watery wine instea d of good red blood ! 

We are Sidonian idlers of the night 

Who pay out gold to have our fighting done 

By soldiers bred abroad. We are a land 

That women lead, who strum on droning gut 

And pipe through foolish tubes along our fields 

For years untilled, our roads all left unpaved, 

Our towns and harbors still unfortified. 

We sit and loiter by the walls that lean 

No longer mended, and ungathered wait 

The olive-crops while broken lutes are patched 

And some new song is learned. Now it must cease! 

Sappho 

He says, my people, we must sing no more. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 21 1 

Lesbians 
And breathe and eat no more ! 

Phocus {aside) 

And drink no more? 

Pittacus 

I am a patient man, and just, I think. 

I seek to find the light, and sometimes learn 

Through error, and advance through unbelief. 

In things imperial I have been taught 

To heed my people's wishes, and to yield — 

But on one base I stand immovable; 

And now I charge you with its final truth: 

The State, that learns to act, endures and lives; 

But one that sits and drones away its nights 

In wine and amorous dreams, must die oj it I 

Phaon 

Yet here two men would act: and one you hold 
In chains — and you a lover of the strong ! 
But let me at him, and I'll leave him there 
As swine-fat for your chariot's axletree ! 

Sappho 
Yes, one you hold in chains, and say not why ! 



212 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Pittacus 
What I have done was done for Lesbos* sake. 

Sappho {to the people) 

Who has done most for Lesbos, Pittacus 
Or Sappho? 

The People 

Sappho ! Sappho ! 

Sappho 

Who has taught 
You to be happy? 

The People 
Sappho it has been ! 

Sappho 

What are my sins, then, that you strike at me 
Thus covertly, and put this man in chains? 

She steps towards Phaon, who turns away from her, with 
a gesture of repudiation. 

Pittacus {seizing his chance) 
Is this man aught to you? 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 213 

Sappho {slowly, after a silence) 

The man is naught to me ! 

Pittacus 
Then what he suffers must be naught to you ! 

Sappho {dazed) 
And what I suffered, too, is naught to him ! 

Pittacus {more assured, realizing Sappho^ s bewilderment) 
Your sins are those of Lesbos, that must cease. 

Sappho 
And when two lovers kiss, I am the cause? 

Pittactcs 

Enough ! I say you are a bHght and shame 
To Lesbos, and this man who lived so deep 
Has lived not in the law. Let him stand forth. 
You are exiled. In seven days a ship 
Shall leave this harbor, going forth at night; 
And under guard you shall go forth with it 
From Lesbos, and on pain of death return ! 

Sappho 
Exiled ! He, Phaon, is exiled from home ! 



214 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Pittacus 

The people of this isle shall speak of you 
As of the dead. 

Sappho (rebelliously) 

My people, have you heard? 

Erinna 

O Sappho, say no more, lest some new blow 
Upon you fall ! 

Sappho 

Why should I fear a man 
Who stands in fear of me? {To Erinna) Now shall 

I taunt 
Him till he sends me forth at Phaon's side ! 

Pittacus (nettled into anger) 
What man is this who fears you? 

The people cheer for Sappho, and crowd closer, hut the 
hoplites hold them hack with drawn swords, circling 
ahout their Tyrant. 

Sappho {heatedly) 

'Tis a man 
Named Pittacus, who rules by hate and fear 
And guile — whose guards, see, even now must hold 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 21 5 

His subjects back with naked swords ! A king 

That Athens calls the Fish-Net Fighter since 

He bore beneath his arm a hidden seine 

And when he fought with Phryno cast his net 

About the stronger man, enmeshed his sword, 

And like a harbor-sweeper, gilled and caught 

And claimed his sickly conquest. . . . We were free 

To choose our lovers and our leaders once, 

And sing when we were happy ! Lesbians, 

Here is a man that Pittacus has said 

Shall into exile go ! And I have said 

He is unjustly sent and shall not go I 

Which shall it be, my people? 

There is a cry or two of " Pittacus " from the waiting 
guards J followed hy a roar of exultant " Sappho! " 
" Sappho! " Pittacus pales at the sound, and motions 
to Inarchus. 

Pittacus 

Guards, stand forth ! 
{Aside to Inarchus) I must act quick, or all can still be 

lost ! 
This woman is a tigress, lashing bars 
Her fury yet may break. One whip I have 
Reserved until the end, one brand of fire 
To beat her back. You hold in readiness 
This girl, Omaphale. When I shall give 
The signal, let her stand before the crowd ! 



2l6 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Inarchus 
The trull shall be produced ! 

Sappho 

Behold the king 
Who casts his people forth without a trial. 

Pittacus {wheeling) 

This woman lies ! No Lesbian has known 
His wrath without just cause ! 

Sappho 

Then tell us why 
This man in chains is exiled ! 

Pittacus 

Since he sought 
A Lesbian's hfe. 

Sappho 

That worthy Lesbian 
In turn sought his. 

Pittacus 

Enough of this; he forced 
The fight upon Alcaeus ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 21 7 

Sappho 

Lies ! All lies ! 
'Twas /, / forced this fight upon them both ! 
I bent them to my will; I harried them, 
And thrust and drove them at each other's throats ! 
I was the arm behind their lifted sword; 
I was the rage behind their cries of hate ! 
And you, who talk of justice, you who turn 
To smite the path, and let the serpent go, 
You shrink and wait behind your sullen guard, 
And dare not act ! 

Pittacus {enraged) 

Act, act I shall! You hear 
This woman's words? From her own mouth she stands 
Accused, arraigned, convicted of her crime ! 

Sappho 

Nay, not a woman, but the mangled husk, 
The trampled marc, of one ! 

Pittacus 

You are exiled/ 

A murmur rises from the crowd. 



2l8 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Sapplio (aside) 

'Tis come, Erinna ! He and I shall go 
Out to the lonely places of the world, 
And learn to live again. . . . Great Pittacus, 
I thank you for this banishment ! It means 
Release, re-birth, to me ! I glory in it ! 

Pittacus 

Ay, glory in it, for behold, you win ! 
You override my word, and doubly win ! 
You said this Phaon here should not be sent 
From Lesbos. Then in Lesbos he remains ! 
You shall be listened to. . . . Your word is law ! 
Release this man, her vow leaves innocent. 
'Tis she who goes from Lesbos, and at dusk! 
'Tis she who now shall watch across the spray 
The failing lights, the slowly sinking hills. 
The home that is to her no longer home ! 

Sappho 

Alone into the world ... yet not alone. 
For where Love is shall be no banishment. 
And where Love waits and walks no loneliness ! 

Pittacus 

Entombed and coffined from this day you are. 
And we shall speak of you as of the dead ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 219 

Sappho 

Oh, Phaon, did you hear? Time was you turned 
And fought for me, at words like this ! 

Phaon 

Time was . 
I loved you, too ! 

Sappho 

Time was you loved me, too ! 

Phaon 
You flung that love away ! 

Sappho 

No; no; it seemed 
Not mine . . . and for the moment I was not 
Myself ... it drove me unto madness. 

Phaon {raging) 

Drove 
You unto madness . . . then unto the man 
You met at midnight in his garden's gloom ! 
Is that not true? 

Sappho 
Yes; that is true. 



220 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon 

You sought 
The buyer e'en before the price was paid ! 

Sappho 
Stop! 

Phaon 

Stop ? Why should I stop ? Have you once stopped 
When passion drove you into other arms ? — 
You palmer- worm that feeds on passion, then 
Advances in a night to newer fields ! 



Oh . . . Phaon ! 



Sappho 



Phaon 



. . . When it took you forth at night 
To seek Alcaeus, when you whirled your wrath 
About me like a flail, for having known 
A girl, and told you not ! 

Sappho {panting) 

This . . . this from you ! 
I have forgiven much. . . . But now there is 
A bourne past which I cannot go, a depth 
To which I dare not stoop ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 221 

Phaon (bitterly) 

And yet you stooped 
And crept to your Alcaeus ! 

' Sappho 

Phaon ! Stop ! 
'Twas love of you, 'twas foolish love of you, 
That took me to him. 

Phaon 

Then must love of him 
Take you from me ! 

Sappho 

I love him not ! 

Phaon (laughing bitterly) 

You love 
Then neither him, nor me, nor any man 
To whom you sold your kisses? 

Sappho 

Oh . . . Enough! 

Phaon 

Enough ? More than enough ! To me you are 
A corpse corrupting, something hateful grown, 
A woman who has passed away — dead, dead 
To me! 



222 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Sappho 
I . . . dead to you? 

Pittacus {stepping forward) 

And dead you are 
To Lesbos and the people that your days 
Have smirched and slavered, like a serpent's trail ! 

Sappho turns, in a mounting frenzy, toward the murmur- 
ing crowd, her speech growing ever more and more 
hnpassioned. 

You hear, my people, you with whom I sang 
And lived and loved and sorrowed — I shall be 
But as the dead to you? 

Erinna (wailing) 

No ; Sappho, no ! 

The crowd take up the cry, until it becomes a roar. They 
advance on the armed hoplites, shouting defiance, 
with cries of " Sappho! " " Sappho! " The guard 
close in, grim and silent, ready for the final stand or 
charge. 

The Lesbians 
She shall not go ! 



SAPPHO 7.Y LEUCADIA 223 

Other Lesbians 
No, she is one of us ! 

Other Lesbians 
Long live the age of love ! 

l^he Sailors 

Let's fight for it ! 

The hoplites are borne back by the force of the crowd, 
Inarchus stands ready, awaiting a sign from Pittacus. 

A Sailor 

The sea ! The sea for Pittacus and all 
His tribe ! 

A Lesbian 

Ay, fling them o'er the cliff ! 

A Sailor 

Put down 
The Tyrant ! 

A Lesbian 

Put an end to tyranny ! 

Pittacus signals to Inarchus, and the girl Oniaphale is 
dragged forward through the crowd. She stands 



224 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

there, white and fragile, a slender barrier between 
the two bands of combatants. Sappho, remembering, 
becomes almost statuesque in her immobility. Pitta- 
cus, seizing the moment, leaps fearlessly into the 
crowd. 

Pittacus 

Is this the Kingdom, this the Age of Love 
You usher in? Behold this broken girl, 
A maid deserted for the Queen of Song 
You clamor of; a girl unwed and wronged 
By him, this flashing Phaon of the seas, 
This empty shell, this sabre of a man ! . . . 

Sappho 
Cease ! 

Pittacus 
. . . Whom she raged and stormed and plotted for . . . 

Sappho 
Cease ! 

Pittacus 

. . . Whom she honeyed, humored, played you for . . 

Sappho 
Cease ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 225 

Pittacus 

. . . Whom she bound and blinded with her love, 
Whom she has gripped and held from this wronged girl, 
Whom still she shakes the columns of this State 
To ding to, since our Council has decreed 
That Phaon and this girl Omaphale 
In public shall be wed, as is the law ! 

Erinna 

Wait, Sappho — plead with Phaon ; plead with him 
For but a word, to make this folly clear ! 

Sappho 

I, plead with Phaon? And relate how I 
Have loved him hopelessly, and once forgave 
His wandering, and wooed him back to her. 
From exile, and would sing their marriage ode, 
And humbly ask a word on why he cleaves 
To earlier lovers ? . . . Oh, this is the end ! 

Sappho^ s fury now amounts to a white heat as she speaks. 
It disregards the issue at hand; it disregards the 
people awaiting her word; it is the last hitter cry 
of a woman broken by fate. 

I hate this man called Phaon, hate him . . . hate 
Him as the living hate the thought of Hell ! 



226 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

And where he goes, or whom of all his loves 

He weds ... is naught to me ! Go, marry him, 

Meek, white-faced child . . . and learn how men are 

false, 
And how the world is built on lies . . . and how 
This thing called Love is but a hollow lie, 
And Hope is but a He, and Happiness 
The crowning lie of all your world of lies ! 



Erinna and AUhis, on either side, support her quivering 
body. Quickly the disordered guard re- forms into 
a solid line. The people jail hack, murmuring but 
bewildered, while Sappho starts up, involuntarily, 
as Phaon is crowded hack and turns away with 
Omaphale at his side. 



Sappho (weakly) 

Yet Phaon, it was all for you ... for you ! 
Oh, do not go without a look, a word ! 



Pittacus, at this cry of the humbled and broken woman, 
is sure of his victory, and at once signals to Inarchus 
and his men. Phaon hesitates and turns to Sappho, 
but the levelled spears of the guard are before 
him. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 227 

FiUacus 

This last word must be mine! It calls the chains 
To bind this woman, who all time is dead 
To Lesbos ! Guards, surround the prisoner. 

Sappho, rising and towering above them in her last su- 
preme outburst oj indignation and passion, ecstatic 
in her rage. 

I, dead to Lesbos ! Tyrant, I am one 

Who broods and wanders here as long as waves 

Wash on your island's shore ! Drive back the sea, — 

But dream not you have driven Sappho forth 

To be forgotten ! Where a lover waits 

Beside a twilit grove, I shall be there ! 

I, where he woos a woman, / shall breathe 

Out through his lips ! Yes, where a singing girl 

Goes with her heavy pitcher to the spring 

At earliest dawn, I shall beside her walk. 

And at the well-curb I shall wait for her ! 

When sailors lift their sails, 'tis I shall breathe 

Across the waves to them ! When man and maid 

Are joined in one, my voice shall chant their hymn ! 

And where the olive-pickers in the sun 

Together sing, I shall be in their midst ! 

And where a net is dipped, the beryl waves 

Shall break in little murmurs with my name ! 

And where the goat-herd tends his flock, and croons 



228 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

The songs that once were mine, and where the men 
Who shape the timbers in the shipyard's din 
Make labor glad with music, / shall hve ! 
Yes, where a youth still loves, a girl still waits, 
/, Sappho, I shall not have passed away I 

Curtain 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 



229 



ACT FOUR 

The scene is the same as in Act One, on the cliffs of Leu- 
cadia. It is one year later, close to the hour of sunset. 
The rising curtain discloses Erinna and an old 
Soothsayer, muffled and cloaked. As the curtain 
goes up he is stooping over the bronze fire-basin set 
in marble, stained and blackened with smoke. Erinna 
sits watching. 

Erinna 
But are you man or woman? 

Soothsayer 

Neither. Man 
I used to be ! But much of me has died ! 

Erinna 
How long have you been bh"nd ? 

Soothsayer {bitterly) 

It seems to me 
That I have been a blind man from my birth. 



230 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Erinna 

Yet by the drifting flame and flight of birds 
You have foretold the future, and worked cures 
Where other charms have failed? 

Soothsayer 

Ay, by the flight 
Of birds, by smoke, by cocks devouring corn, 
By winds, by meteors, by red-hot iron. 
By divers entrails, and the drip of wax 
In water, I have many wonders worked ! 

He gropes and feels about the altar, nervously. 

What is it, maiden, that you wish to know? 

Erinna 
First tell me, what am I? 

Soothsayer (peering into space) 

I seem to see 
A thrush that crouches by a nightingale, 
Yet neither sings. 

Erinna 

But once I used to sing. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 23I 

Soothsayer 

You are a singer, eh? When I was young 
I knew a man of Leucas who would take 
A hollow shin-bone pierced with many vents 
And play us cunning tunes. In Lesbos, too, 
I heard a girl called Sappho sing . ,. . 

Erinna 
Heard Sappho ! 

Soothsayer 

Ay, the Tenth Muse after whom 
The older Nine once walked ! 

Erinna 

Yes, yes; I know — 
Sir, it is for a sister that I ask 
This augury. 

Soothsayer 
What has befallen her? 

Erinna 

She is sick 
In heart. 

Soothsayer 
Aught else? 



232 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Erinna 
And most unhappy. 

Soothsayer 

Ah, 
Unhappy ! Has she loved, or has she known 
A man unworthy her? 

Erinna 

Such man she knew! 
And now the loneliness of all the world 
Weighs on her soul and turns her troubled dreams 
To olden days and dark imaginings. 

Soothsayer 
And now her love is dead? 

Erinna 

That would I know. 
She mourns by day, and never speaks his name, 
But in the night she weeps and cries to him 
And through her dreams his name forever sounds. 
Yet when she wakes her heart seems dead again. 
And hour by hour she broods beside the sea. 

Soothsayer 
Thinks she this lover dead? 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 233 

Erlnna 

He is not dead. 

Soothsayer 

How could she know he is not dead? 

Erinna 

I sent 
To Lesbos and made sure he hves. 

Soothsayer 

And when 
You told her of it? 

Erinna 

Then she neither wept 
Nor laughed nor spake ! 

Soothsayer 

She must have suffered deep ! 

Erinna 

O tell me how much longer it will last, 
And what will come of it ! 

Soothsayer 

Take then this seed 
And cast it on the flame. 



234 SAPPHO IN LEUCADJA 

Erinna 
What seed is it? 

Soothsayer 
Sea-fennel mixed with myrrh. But was it cast? 

Erinna goes to the altar and casts the seed on the smoul- 
dering fire. 

Erinna 
'Tis on the flame. 

Soothsayer 

The smoke . . . how does it rise? 

Erinna 

It rises in a column, thin and straight. 

Soothsayer 

And still so rises? 

Erinna 

No . . . for now it drifts 
And wavers, in a broken cloud. 

Soothsayer 

Enough ! 
Now take this sparrow. Hold it in your hand, 
And face the east. . . . Now let the bird go free ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 235 

Erinna 
'Tis free ! 'Tis gone ! 

Soothsayer 

How has it flown? 

Erinna 

It flew 
Beyond the cliffs ! 'Tis lost within the Sea ! 
What can such things portend ? 

The Soothsayer is silent, wrapt in thought. 

What do they mean ? 

Soothsayer 

It means good news, and bad. ... Go you and bring 
This woman to me ... I must speak with her 1 

Erinna 

Then gently, speak to her the darker news; 
Oh, give her peace — for she has need of it ! 

{Exit) 

Soothsayer {disclosing himself as Phaon) 

This is the hour where life and death divide, 
Where all the rivers of the world hold back 
And wait some new beginning ... or the end \ 



236 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

O Aphrodite, you who leaned across 

My oar with luminous eyes and filled the gloom 

With glory, help me, help me in this hour ! 

Sappho enters, slowly, with Erinna. Sappho is robed 
in white, and on her hair is a heavy crown of dark 
violets, making paler her pale face. She does not 
look towards Phaon — her dreamy gaze is bent on 
the Sea. 

Sappho 

What sail is that? I thought I knew each ship 
That passes here ! 

Erinna 

'Tis one from Lesbos come. 

Sappho 

From Lesbos ! Lesbos ! O how frail a thing 
To face so many seas, to creep so far 
From home ! I wonder if its timbers thrill 
And ache for Lesbos now? If through its keel 
Some wordless anguish burns, when e'er the name 
Of Lesbos comes to it ... as in my heart ! 

Erinna 

This prophet fares from Lesbos, and would speak 
With you alone ! 

{Exit) 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 237 

Sappho slowly turns and studies the soothsayer, who 
rejnains cloaked. The sunlight falls clear and gold 
on the two figures. 

Sappho (murmurs) 
This sail from Lesbos fares ! 

Phaon 

Ay, from the land that cast Alcaeus out, 

A broken exile, into Sicily; 

The land that once was known as Sappho's isle, 

And shall again be hers. 

Sappho 
What man are you? 

Phaon 

One who would wait and seek you out beyond 
The uttermost unkeeled domains of Night ! 

Sappho 
Who . . . 

Phaon 

One who comes to bear you home again, 
Still crowned with ivy and wild olive as 
You came from Athens ! 



238 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 

Sappho 

Phaon ! 

Phaon 

Sappho ! 

Sappho 

Oh, 
Why have you followed me ? Why have you come 
To this grey land that is my Underworld 
Of ghosts and dreams ? 

Phaon 
To take you home again ! 

Sappho 



It is too late ! 



Phaon 



Nay, you have been recalled — 
I bear the Lesbian Council's word to bring 
You out of exile ! Lesbos cried for you 
Till Pittacus himself was forced to bow 
Unto their clamor ! Athens also rose 
And said you should return. . . . And I, 
Who loved you once, and love you evermore, 
Now plead with you to come. 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 239 

Sappho (musingly) 

It is too late ! 
Dear hills of sun and gloom and green . . . soft hills 
That I shall see no more ! 

Phaon 

Nay, Sappho, come — 
They wait and ask for you, but not as I. 
They beg the glad bird-throated girl they crowned 
With violets, the Voice they listened to 
At twilight when the brief day's work was done. 
I beg the woman who made all my world 
A dusk of warmth and rapture . . . her to whom 
My lonely heart has yearned ! 

Sappho (looking up) 

Omaphale — 
Where waits Omaphale? Where are the loves 
You laughed and whispered to this many a year? 

Phaon 

There is but one great love in any life, 
The rest are ghosts, to mock its memories. 
All through the weary months I wanted you, 
Cried out for you, and had to come to you ! 



240 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Sappho {slowly) 
And had to come to me ! And wanted me ! 

Phaon 

Great wrong I wrought you, but I was deceived, 
And deeply I have suffered ! 

Sappho 

Suffered? When? 

Phaon 

The loss of you , . . the ache and emptiness 

Of one who knew all love, and is denied; 

The torture of the days that are no more; 

The terror and the anguish born of ways 

That one great love illumed, that one lost voice 

Still like a fading lute with sorrow haunts ! 

Turn not away o . . look at me, Sappho, c . . Come, 

Come back with me where still the singing girls 

Laugh, ruddy-ankled, round the Lesbian vats. 

And every hill and lowland is your home, 

And deep throats from the laden galleys sing 

By night of love and women as of old ! 

Sappho {still wrapt in thought, wistfully) 
How far away those twilight voices are ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 24 1 

Phaon 

But still they chant your words, and wait for you, 
And down the solemn Dorian scale the pipes 
Wander and plead, and note by note still wake 
With soft ^olian rapture. Still come back 
Where droning flute and harp shall drowse away 
This wordless hunger that has paled your face, 
Where every lover knows your music still, 
And every meadow keeps your voice alive, 
Where lonely cliffs reach out their arms for you .... 
Come back, and be at rest ! 

Sappho 

O island home 
Where we were happy once ! 

Phaon 

And shall again 
Be happy, where the golden vetch is thick 
Along the cliffs, and cool the ohve-groves, 
And all the shadowy fir-lands and the hills 
Lean tender purple to folia's coast, 
And all the harbor-lights still wait and watch, 
Like weary eyes, for you to come again ! 

Sappho 

Yes, well I know them where their paths of gold 
Once lay like wavering music on the sea ! 



242 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon 

And there like wine made sweet with honey, life 
Shall flow reluctantly ! 

Sappho 

O sea-washed home 
Where we, so long ago, were happy once ! 

Phaon 

I brought a sorrow to that home, I know — 
But I have suffered for it, and have learned 
How all the paths of all the oceans lead 
To you — you — you ! 

Sappho 

Oh speak not thus to me - 
It is too late, my Phaon. 

'Twas your hand 
That crushed the silver goblet of my heart. 
And now the wine is spilt; the page is read, 
And from the tale the earlier glory gone; 
The torch has failed amid the falling dusk, 
The dream has passed, and rapture is a word 
Unknown to my sad heart, and music sounds 
Mournful as evening bells on lonely seas. 

Phaon 

But Lesbos calls, and still you will not hear; 
Our home is waiting, and you will not come ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 243 

Sappho 

Lightly you loved me, Phaon, long ago; 
And there were other arms unknown to me 
That folded over you, though none more fond 
Than mine that fell so wing-like round your head. 
And there were other eyes that drooped as mine 
Despairingly before your pleading mouth. 

Phaon 

" I have loved oft and lightly that, at last, 
I might love you ! " Can you remember not ? 

Sappho 

But many were the nights I wept, and learned 
How sorrowful is all divided love, 
How we who give too often . . » never give^ 
How one voice must be lost, and being lost, 
May be remembered most. 

Phaon 

But you alone 
It was, pale-throated woman, that I loved ! 
Through outland countries have I seen your eyes, 
And like a flower through all my perilous ways 
Your face has gone before me, and your voice 
Beyond dim islands and mysterious seas 



244 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Has drawn me to you, calling from the dunes 
Where Summer once hung low above our hands, 
And we, as children, dreamed to dreaming waves, 
And all the world seemed made for you and me ! 



Sappho 

It is too late; the wine of life is spilt. 

The shore-lark of our youth has flown away, 

And all the Summer vanished. 

One brief year 
Ago I could have gone to any home, 
A wanderer with you o'er troubled seas; 
And slept beside your fire content, and fared 
Still on again between green hills and strange, 
And echoing valleys where the eagled pines 
Were full of gloom, and many waters sang, — 
Still on to some low plain or highland coign 
Remembered not of men, where we had made 
Our home amid the music of the Spring, 
Letting life's twilight sands glide thro' the glass 
So golden-slow, so glad, no plaintive chime 
Could e'er be blown to us across the dusk. 
From Life's grey towers of many-tongued regret ! 
Then I had been most happy at your side, 
Easing my exiled heart with homely thoughts 
And turning these sad hands to simple things. 
In our low oven that should gleam by night 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 245 

Baking my wheaten loaves, and with my wheel 
Spinning the milky wool, and light of heart 
Dipping my brazen pitcher in the spring 
That bubbled by our door. 

And then, perchance, 
(O anodyne for all dark-memoried days !) 
To feel the touch of little hands, and hold 
A child — your child and mine — close on this breast, 
And croon it songs and tunes quite meaningless 
Unto the bosom where no milk has been — 
Yes, fonder than the poolside lutings low 
Of dreaming frogs to their Arcadian god ! 
There had I borne to you a sailor folk, 
A tawny-haired swart brood of boys, as brave 
As mine old Phaon was, cubbed by the sea 
And buffeted by wind and brume; and I, 
On winter nights when all the waves were black, 
In musing wise had told them tales and dreams 
Of Lesbian days, e'en though the words should sound 
To my remembering heart, so far from home, 
As mournful as the wind to imprisoned men; 
— Old tales they should re-tell long ages hence 
Unto their children's children by the fire 
When loud the dark South- West that brings the rain 
Moaned round their walls ! And in more happy days 
By some pale golden summer moon, when dim 
The waters were — mysterious eves of dusk 
And music, stars, and silence and regret — 



246 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Singing into my saddened heart should come 
Soft thoughts, to bloom in words as roses break 
And blow and wither and are gone; and we 
Reckless of time, should waken not and find 
Our hearts grown old, but evermore live on 
As do the stars and Earth's untroubled trees, 
While seasons came, like birds, and went again, — 
Though Greece and her green islands were no more, 
And all her marbled power should pass away. 
And empires, like an arch, should crumble down, 
And kings should live and die, and one by one 
Like flames their lofty cities should go out ! 

Phaon 

Your voice still falls on my dry heart like dew ! 

I hear you speak, and know not what you say, 

For like a bell your name swings through my dreams ! 

And all my being throbs and cries for you ! 

Come back with me; but come, and I will speak 

A thousand gentle words for each poor tear 

That dimmed your eyes ! Come back, and I will crown 

Your days with love so enduring it shall light 

The eternal stars to bed ! 

Sappho 

Ask me no more, — 
I warmed the whimpering whelps of Passion once 
In this white breast of mine — but, now, full grown, 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 247 

They seem to stalk me naked through the world ! 

Too fond I now should bend unto the fierce 

Necessity of bliss, and in each glow 

Of golden anguish yearn forever toward 

Some quiet gloom where we can never walk 1 

These feet of mine have known too many homes 

To claim one door, and close it on the world ! 

This bosom now is hot as ^Etna's, torn 

And seared with fires that long since passed away! 

Yet had you only loved me, as I asked — 

How humble I had been, how I had tried 

From this poor broken twilight to rebuild 

The Dream, and from its ashes to restore 

The Temple ! 

Phaon 

But I loved you then, and love 
You now ! The torn plume of the wing I take, 
The ruined rose, and all the empty cruse; 
Here I accept the bitter with the sweet, 
The autumnal sorrow with the autumnal gold; 
Tears shall go unregretted, and much pain 
Gladly I take, if grief, in truth, and you 
Can still come hand in hand to me. 

Sappho 

No! No! 
For good were life if every lonely bough 
Could lure again its vanished nightingale ! 



248 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

— If all that luting music of first love 
Could be recalled down years grown desolate ! 
Lightly they sing who love and are beloved; 
And men shall lightly listen; but the heart 
That has been broken and must hide its wound 
In music, is remembered through the years ! 
It was not much I asked in those old days — 
For men have wider missions than we know. 
'Tis not, thro' all their moods, they hunger for 
Our poor pale faces. As a flame at sea 
They seek us in the fog, and then forget. 
'Tis when by night the battle-noise has died; 
'Tis when the port is won, and wind and storm 
Are past; 'tis when the heart for solace aches; 
'Tis when they stop to rest in darkling woods, 
Or under alien stars the fire is lit. 
And when regret makes deep some idle hour. 
Then would we have our name sing throbbingly 
Thro' some beloved heart, soft as a bird, — 
And swing with it — swing sweet as silver bells ! 
Not all your crowded day I hoped to see 
You turn to me: but when some little flower 
Shone through the dust and lured a softer mood, 
I hoped your troubled eyes would seek my eyes ! 
And in those days that I first cried for you 
And went uncomforted, had you returned, 
I could have washed your careless feet with tears, 
And unto you still grown, and gone thro' sun 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 249 

And gloom beside you, and still in the bliss 
Of motherhood and most mysterious birth 
Forgotten ancient wrongs 1 

Phaon 

Why brood on things 
Turned into dust and ashes long ago, 
When softly dawn by golden dawn, and eve 
By opal eve, Earth whispers : Life is ours ! 

Sappho 
Once I could listen to you, e'er you go; — 

Phaon 
And still you bid me go? 

Sappho 

Oh, had you gone 
While still the glory of my dreaming fell 
Like sunlight round you, — had you even died, 
I should have loved you now, as women love 
The wonder and the silence of the West 
When with sad eyes they breathe a last farewell 
To where the black ships go so proudly out, — 
Watching with twilit faces by the Sea 
Till down some golden rift the fading sails 
Darken and glow and pale amid the dusk, 
And gleam again, and pass into the gloom ! 



250 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon 

Then once you loved me ! Let me know no more ! 
The cry of that old love shall lead you back 
To me, and make us one ! 

Sappho 

Nay, Home I go — 
Home, Home afar, where unknown seas forlorn 
On gloomy towers and darkling bastions foam, 
And lonely eyes look out for one dim sail 
That never comes, and men have said there is 
No sun. — And though I go forth soon no fear 
Shall cling to me, since I a thousand times 
Ere this have died a little day by day; 
And sun by sun the grave insatiable 
Has taken to its gloom some happier grace, 
And hour by hour some glory old engulfed, 
And left me like a house untenanted. 



Phaon 

No more of this ! I need you ; still turn back 
With me, and let one riotous flame of bliss 
Forever burn away these withered griefs. 
As fire eats clean the autumn mountain-side; 
For all this sweet sad-eyed dissuasiveness 
Endears like dew the flower of final love ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 25 1 

Sappho (abstracted) 

— Yes, I have died ere this a thousand times; 
For on the dusky borderlands of dream, 
Across the twihght of dim summer dawns 

Before the hooves of pearl throbbed down the wind, 
And listening to the birds amid green boughs 
Where tree and hill and field were touched with fire, 

— Hearing, yet hearing not, thro' all the thin 
Near multitudinous lament of Dawn's 

Low rustling leaves, stirred by some opal wing, — 
Oft have I seemed to feel my soul come home ! 
And faint and strange on my half-wakened ears 
Would fall the flute and pipe of early birds; 
And strange the odor of the opening flowers; 
And strange the world would lie, and stranger still 
The quiet rain along the glimmering grass: 
And Earth, sad with so many memories 
Of bliss, and beautiful with vague regrets, 
Would take on poignant glories, strange as death! 

Phaon 

What is this dim-eyed madness and dark talk 
Of death? 

Sappho 

Hush ! I have seen Death pass a hand 
Along old wounds, and they have ached no more ! 



252 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

And with one little word lull pain away, 
And heal long-wasting tears ! 



Phaon 

But these soft lips 
Were made not for the touch of mold ! 

Sappho 

Time was 
I thought Death stern, and scattered at his door 
My dearest roses, that his feet might come 
And softly go ! 

Phaon 

This body white was made 
Not for the grave, — this flashing. wonder of 
The hand for hungry worms ! 

Sappho 

Oh, quiet as 
Soft rain on water shall it seem, and sad 
Only as Hfe's most dulcet music is, 
And dark as but a bride's first dreaded night 
Is dark — mild, mild as mirrored stars ! 

But you, 
You will forget me, Phaon ; there the sting ! 
The sorrow of the grave is not its green. 



SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 

Nor yet the salt tear on its violet; 

It is the years that bring the grey neglect, 

When tangled grasses smooth the lessening mound, 

When leaf by leaf the tree of sorrow wanes, 

And on the urn unseen the tarnish comes, 

And tears are not so bitter as they were ! 

Time sings so low to our bereaved ear. 

So softly breathes, that, bud by falling bud, 

The garden of our Grief all empty hes, 

And unregretted dips the languid oar 

Of Charon thro' the gloom, and then is gone ! 



Phaon 

Red-lipped and breathing woman, made for love, 
How can you talk of Death, or dream that one 
Who ever looked upon you can forget ? 



Sappho 

You will forget me, though you would or not ! 
Yes, in some other Spring when other lips 
Let fall my name, you will remember not ! — 
Yet come and let me look into your eyes, 
Thus quietly, as women view the dead. 
And dream of far-off things ! As in farewell. 
Still let me feel your hand about my hand 1 



253 



254 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon 

Your touch bums thro' my blood like fire. You have 
Not changed. Still must I kiss the heavy rose 
Of your red mouth ! 

Sappho 

No, not till Death has leaned 
And kissed it white as this white cliff, and robed 
This body for its bridegroom ! 

Phaon 

Honey-pale 
And passion-worn you seem, and I am blind 
With looking on your beauty. Sappho, come — 
Come close into my arms. 

Sappho 

It is too late; 
Forth to a sterner lover must I fare ! 

Phaon 
Mine flamed your first love, and shall glow your last ! 

Sappho 
Then meet this One, and know! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 255 

Phaon 



The hounds of Hell 



And Aidoneus himself 



Sappho 
Hush ! 

Phaon 

You I seek ! 
The cadence of your voice enraptures me, 
The very breathing of your bosom turns 
My blood to sweeping fire, and leaves me faint 
With longing, makes me flash and burn with love ! 
And still you would elude me — but this arm 
Is strong, and I shall know no other god — 

Sappho 
Cease ! son of passion 1 

Phaon 

Not until these arms, 
Shall hold and fold about you, not until — 

Sappho 

By all the hours you darkened, by the love 
You crushed and left embittered, hear me speak ! 



256 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon (bitterly) 
Thus women change — and in their time forget I 

Sappho 

There lies the sorrow — if we could forget ! 

For one brief hour you gave me all the love 

That women ask, and then with cruel hands 

Set free the singing voices from the cage, 

And tore the glory from the waiting rose; 

And through life's empty garden still I dreamed 

And called for Love, and walked unsatisfied. 

Love ! Love ! 'Tis we who lose it know it best ! 

By day a fire and wonder, and by night 

A wheeling star that sinks in Mystery„ 

Love ! Love ! It is the blue of bluest skies ; 

The farthest green of waters touched with sun I 

It is the calm of moonlight and of leaves, 

And yet the troubled music of the Sea ! 

It is the frail original of faith, 

The timorous thing that seems afraid of light, 

Yet, loosened, sweeps the world, consuming time 

And tinsel empires, grim with blood and war 1 

It is the voiceless want and loneliness 

Of blighted lands made wonderful with rain ! 

Regret it is, and song, and wistful tears; 

The rose upon the tomb of afterthought. 

The only wine of life, that on the lip 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 257 

Of Thirst turns not to ashes ! Change and time 

And sorrow kneel to it, for at its touch 

The world is beautiful . . . the world is horn! 



Phaon 

Your words were ever tuned to madden men, 
And I am drunk with these sweet pleadings, soft 
As voices over many waters blown ! 
And thus you come to me against your will ! 

Sappho 

Hear me, for by those gods you fear the most 
There is a fire vdthin me bums away 
All pity, and some Hate, half-caged, may eat 
Thro' its last bar ! 

Phaon 

Not till your mouth's 
Sad warmth droops unto mine ! 

Sappho 

Yours once I was, 
And once I watched you spurn and tread me down 
And long amid my perished roses lay, 
Broken with sorrow, but still held my peace ! 
But now I warn you that the tide has turned ! 



258 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Touch nevermore these hands, for my torn heart 

Is desperate, and given not to words ! 

Quite humble have I been, and duly spake 

My lips as you once asked that they should speak! 

But now this empty husk from which you drained 

Life's darkest wine, shall die in its own way. 

Yes, yes; as water sighs and whispers through 

Some hollow-throated urn, so now through me 

Shall steal contentment. Touch me not ! Stand back ! 

Or if you will, locked arm in reckless arm. 

Come with me, down, down to this crawling Deep ! 

Phaon 
What madness can this be ? 

Sappho 

The ocean waves 
Are softer with their dead, and autumn winds 
More kindly are with leaves, than mortal love 
With women, for it kills and buries not. 

Phaon 

You murmur of the dead, when warm and quick 
You breathe before me, and bewilder thought! 
With but the wine-like rapture of your voice 
You make me desperate ! 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 259 

Sappho 

Nay, touch me not ! 

Phaon 

You shall come with me, Sappho ! I alone 
Dare not go back. I carry in my breast 
The edict of the Council. It commands 
I bring you safely home, and should I fail 
A thousand hands would beat me to the sea. 
But in this breast I bear a second scroll, 
A more imperious message, writ and sealed 
Of Love itself. I shall no longer be 
Denied or trifled with, though I must tear 
You like a rooted flower from where you wait; 
Though I must take you, like a fluttered bird, 
And bruise you in the taking ! Come with me ! 

Sappho 
Lay not unholy hands upon the dead. 

Phaon 

Yes, I shall bear you forth, as from a wall 
That totters or a chamber wrapped in flame ! 

He seizes her resisting body. His strength overpowers 
her^ and she lies back in his arms, panting. There 
she catches sight 0} the knife in his belt. 



26o SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Sappho 
Nay, Phaon, I shall go, if you but wait — 

Phaon 
Too long I waited ! 

Sappho 

Take me not by force, 
Oh, not by force now, Phaon ! Let me come 
Quite willingly, made ready for your arms — 

Phaon 
I shall release you not ! 

Sappho 

But let me breathe 
One brief farewell, one broken last good-by 
To all my older life. . . . Then you can come 
And take me where you will, and not a word 
Of anger or lament shall pass my lips ! 

She forces him about so that they face the sea. 

Then I shall go almost without regret; 
For ghost-like even now I am; these eyes 
Wave-worn as Leucothea's eyes must seem, 
And I am tired, and it is good to sleep. 
So alone, sad Mother Ocean, let me rest; 



SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 261 

Alone, grey Mother, take me in your arms — 
Whose sorrow must have been as deep as mine. 
Who loved in times I know not of, and lost, 
And still must murmur of it night and day 
Along your mournful-noted shores ! 

Phaon 

What gods 
Are these you call upon in ecstasy ? 

Sappho 

I call not on your gods, or mine. For they 

Live high above our Earth, and scarce would know 

The odor of my incense, or how white 

My piteous altars stood ! Too like the Moon 

That looks so disimpassioned over men 

And their tumultuous cities crowned with pain. 

Smile down the gods on our tight-lipped despairs ! 

Yet far I am from home to go, and far 

From any voice to comfort me beyond 

The cypress twilight and the hemlock gloom ! 

But take me. Mournful Mother, while I feel 

Burn through my blood this bitter ecstasy ! 

Oh, take me. Mother Ocean, in your arms. 

And let the cooling waters lave and wash 

All sorrow from my eyes and rock the pain 

From my poor heart ! 



262 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 

Phaon 

Upon my heart your heart 
Shall rock in weary slumber and forget 
These ghostly sorrows ! 

He crushes her half-passive body still closer. 

Give me of your lips 
As once, on Leucate, so long ago ! 

Sappho 
Oh, free me, Phaon ! 

Phaon 

Not until you lie 
At rest, and willingly, within my arms ! 

Sappho 

Oh, free me, but a moment ! 

* 
Phaon 

Nevermore \ 

Sappho 

This is the costliest last kiss of all 
Your life . . . and mine ! 



SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 263 

Phaon 

I care not what it costs, 
It crowns me with a peace — above the gods ! 

She shudders, hut lies passive in his arms, her own 
creeping about him. Her hand falls to his kni/e, 
which she withdraws, raises, and sinks deep in his 
side. His arms droop away, he crumbles down at her 
feet, without a word, dead. She scarcely moves as 
she gazes at the body. The two figures are bathed 
in the full golden light of the sunset. The voice of 
Erinna calls from the distance. Sappho turns with a 
haunted look, raises her arms, and leaps into the sea. 
Faintly, from the harbor beyond the cliff sounds the 
chords of " The Sailors' Hymn to Sunset, '' as the 
light slowly pales and passes. 

Curtain 



264 THE THREE VOICES 



THE THREE VOICES 

'\^^HEN the fire sinks flame by flame 

And the shadows, Dear, grow long. 
Shall I turn for praise or blame 
To the Brazen-Throated Throng? 

When the last poor deed is done, 
Shall I look, O Good and True, 

To the old friends one by one, 
The Silver-Throated Few? 

Nay, all that I strove to do, 

However it end, was done 
For You and the love of You, 

The Golden-Throated One ! 



LBFe '06 



Sappho in 
Leu c a d I a 



BY 

ARTHUR STRINGER 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1907 



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